


Mutations are science

by everybodyknowsme



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mutants, F/F, F/M, Mutant Powers, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 02:40:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 36
Words: 52,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13180659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everybodyknowsme/pseuds/everybodyknowsme
Summary: First, I wanted to write The 100 as scientific correct as possible. Then there was the plot of season two, which made that impossible, so now radiation has a chance to cause superattributes (not powers, because some mutations suck)





	1. Landing

**Author's Note:**

> 300 years ago a nuclear war destroyed earth. The only humans alive today are the descendants of those, who were in space when the bombs fell, most coming at the last moment, boarding ships that were planned to leave earth at a later time. The space-stations joined together to form the “Ark”. For all they can tell earth won´t be inhabitable for humans for another 100 years.  
> The 300 years in the heightened radiation of space have changed the human race: about a third of the Arks population are born with nonhuman attributes or abilities; These people are frowned upon, but due to there usefulness accepted.  
> To save resources such as air most crimes are punishable by death. When someone is “floated” it´s already gruesome to watch: the air gets evacuated from an airlock, the machines creating the illusion of gravity are switched off, which causes the corpse to float, and lastly the outer door gets opened quickly, which causes the corpse to drift out. Since they can´t afford to lose the biomass the body gets salvaged once the spectators are removed from view. Criminals who aren’t of age are imprisoned and get their trial as a gift for their 18´th birthday. When mutants use their abilities to commit a crime, or their abilities are considered dangerous, they receive an implant that blocks the effects of the mutation.  
> Two generations were supposed to be born in space, before we planned to return to the ground.

Clarke owed it to the fact, that her mother was the chief of medical on the ark, that she didn’t have a blocker-implant, since it was more or less a standard procedure, that everyone arrested was implanted one. She was alarmed when her cell-door was opened. “I´m seventeen, I still have one year before I get floated”, she screamed, as she was dragged to the corridor. When she wanted to use her ability to break free suddenly her mother stopped her: “Listen Clarke you´re not getting floated, you got a chance. Your instincts will tell you to help the others, trust them...” before Abby could finish her presumable last words to her daughter, Clarke was knocked out by a guard’s shock-stick.  
She woke up strapped into a seat of what she recognized to be a dropship. It was full of other people who seemed to be her age or even younger. Except her neighbor, her childhood-friend Wells Jaha, she didn’t know any of the kids. She assumed that they were delinquents like her.  
“Why are you here?”, she asked Wells.  
“I set the Eden-Tree on fire”  
Before she could asked any further a screen started playing a message of Wells father Thelonius Jaha, the Chancellor, telling them, that they were deemed expendable and sent to the ground. Should the survive until the rest of the ark came after them, their criminal records would be wiped.

If it wasn’t for that idiot Finn Collins, they would all have reached the ground alive.  
On the way down the spacewalker unbuckled to enjoy weightlessness. Two guys acted after his example. Contrary to them, he survived the entranced into the lower atmosphere and the opening of the parachutes. The rapid braking of the dropship had sent the lose bodies flying through this level of the dropship.  
Upon landing the 100 had found it hard to stand up at first: on the ark gravity was simulated by electromagnets in the floors, that pulled the omnipresent iron, that was even in the clothes, down.  
Nobody was used to the feeling of actual gravity. Most of them fell out of their seats and lay on the floor when a dark-haired girl was already at the lever, which opened the door.  
It was Octavia Blake.  
She was found when Clarke was already in solitary, Wells explained to her. Her mother and her older Brother had kept her hidden in the floor of their room, due to the strict one-child-policy on the ark.

They left the dropship to adore the beauty of the ground. Clarke was one of the few, to not get enthusiastic over the view. She was looking at a map that was in the dropship when a dark-haired boy with Asian features approached her and told her, that the radio of the dropship was broken.

“Hey listen up! I know your happy to be alive, on the ground, free and so on but we have urgent news: the radio doesn’t work and we’re about a days' march from Mount Weather! If we want the get there before it gets dark, we have to get going!”, Clarke announced to the kids.  
“We won’t do, what the counsel says!” A tall guy said. Octavia recognized him:”What the fuck are you doing here Bellamy!”  
The following discussion ended with Bellamy Blake, Octavia’s brother, and Wells staying at the dropship and watching over the delinquents, while Clarke lead Finn, Monty, Jasper and Octavia to Mt. Weather to gather supplies.


	2. Earth kills

After Clarke was briefed about what had happened on the ark while she was in solitary she explained the group, why they were here: ”The ark is dying. My father found out and got floated, because he wanted to go public about it and I went into solitary because I wanted to help him. In about three month they will have to decimate the population again. We bought them about one month.” “I’m sure they´ll get that fixed...” “I’m talking about a critical, full-system-failure. The ark simply wasn’t built to stay in space for this long. Their only chance is the ground.”

After a while Octavia ran ahead. She stopped on some kind of rock and without explanation started stripping, earning open mouths from the rest of the group. Then she jumped and the rest heard a splashing sound. They came closer to see Octavia standing chest deep in a river. Before anyone could join her in the water she was attacked by something, that seemed to be a giant snake.  
Clarke realized, that the beast was reading the water-flow, similar to hearing.  
Jasper immediately hopped into the river, to help her. Clarke, Finn and Monty rolled a bolder into the river distracting the snake from Octavia. Jasper pulled her out.  
“For once I actually WANT to use my superpower and then your mum’s pills are blocking them!”, she muttered in Clarke’s direction.  
“My mum gave you suppressants instead of an implant? What does your mutation do?”, Clarke wondered.  
“I kill. That’s why I don’t have an implant. When I’m unconscious or in great pain it’s hard to concentrate on not killing everybody, who get´s close to you. My mutation causes my body to raise a defensive field around me. Unless I try not to, I kill everything that comes about 12cm (they grew up in a space-station, they use metrics) to my skin.”  
“Well I’m happy that you’re on suppressants right now”, said Clarke as she knelt next to Octavia, lay her hand on her leg, next to the wound the snake caused, when it had grabbed Octavia. The bleeding stopped immediately. “No wonder the doc missed you, my leg already feels fine again”, she mused.  
“The pain will come back when I take my hands away, but examining the wound is much easier, when the patient can hold still. You’re lucky: your leg’s not broken and since the water was pretty clean the chance of an infection is rather low. I suggest we make a break here and think how we could get on the other side of this river, while you rest your leg. Make sure to keep it covered with clean cloth to prevent an infection. If the pain won’t go away, worsens or the bleeding starts again, see me.”, Clarke stated.  
When she lifted her hands the bleeding didn’t start again. Octavia felt the pain returning. It wasn’t crippling, but she was fine with the break. Finn climbed a tree to fetch one of the vines hanging over the river.  
In the meantime Clarke had to explain to the curious Monty, Jasper and Octavia, what she had just done:” My ability had been called 'system-control'. It’s a stupid name. When I’m in contact with a tunnel, a corridor, an artery or a nerve I can feel where it’s going, what flows mainly through it and I can 'read' the flow. So if someone came into medical, saying, he couldn’t feel his arm, I would simply hold his hand and could exactly pinpoint the cause, someone came with internal bleeding and while I held his hand it stopped and mum could just operate him without even using sedatives. But it’s not limited to bodies: I lean against a wall and could draw a blueprint of the air-ducts in Alpha. What about you guys? Are O and me the only ones without implant?”  
“I have an implant and I don’t even know, what my superpower is, so probably you are.” Finn was back with a vine.  
Jasper wanted to go first. Apparently he wanted to impress Octavia. He crossed the river cheering. They retrieved the vine and Finn prepared to go next, as Jasper held something up, he found on the ground: the sign prohibiting trespassers to come closer to Mt. Weather.  
Then a spear hit him.  
Clarke, Monty, Finn and Octavia fled in panic.


	3. Earth skills

They ran for a few meters, when they heard screaming.  
“Jasper is still alive!”, Clarke shouted out.  
“We have to get back!”  
“We can’t help him right now. Who ever threw that spear, he was behind us, that means, he hit his mark over a distance of at least fifteen meters. We have to bring back-up!”, Finn voiced his reasoning.  
When they got back to the dropship, they found chaos: There was a bonfire, except that the other delinquents had apparently done nothing productive while Clarke had been gone. On the contrary: in the fire the wristbands were being destroyed and a group had attacked Wells and took his wristband.  
Clarke got their attention: “Stop taking of those wristbands! They are the only way for our parents to know, that we are still alive. Take them off and they think we are dead!”  
“That’s the point, princess! We can do, what we want!”, Bellamy boasted.  
“Do you think, this is a game? We just came from Mt. Weather; empty-handed, because Jasper has been attacked by grounders. If they don’t kill us, we might starve, or freeze in the cold, or die of a sickness! Those people up there are not only the Council and our parents, they are our farmers, our doctors, our engineers. Like it or not, but we need their help!”, Clarke countered. That had taken a lot of enthusiasm from the delinquents.  
A little later, Clarke spoke to Monty: “We will find Jasper and won’t come back without him. But you won’t come with us.”  
Before Monty could protest, Clarke continued: “I know, you want to join the search-party, but I need you to work on the radio.”  
“You expect me, to give a radio a higher priority than my best friend?”  
“Yes. The truth is: We can’t afford to loose you: you’re from Farm-station and were taken in be the engineers. It’s likely, that you’re skills will be needed more often than mine.”  
“Okay, I’ll do my best, but promise me, that you will bring him back.”  
“Like I said: I won’t come back without him.”  
Octavia came, followed by her brother: “When are we leaving?”  
“You will not go anywhere! You nearly died when you first went out.”, Bellamy cut her short.  
“If it wasn’t for Jasper, I would have died. I want to help him!”  
“Atom! Make sure, that my sister stays within the camp!”, Bellamy called out to one of his followers.  
Bellamy wanted to go, but Clarke stopped him: “I did want you to help us.”  
“And way would I do that?”  
“You want to be the leader, but right now it looks, like only one of us was afraid.”  
“And why do you want me to come with me?”  
“Because you have a gun.”

Bellamy and Murphy came with Clarke, Wells and Finn. They reached the place, where they had last seen Jasper.  
“Okay, we need to find a safe way over that river. Me and Finn will look this way, you guys will go the other way.”, Clarke ordered.  
“Why are we helping her?”, Murphy asked, turning his back to Clarke.  
“They already think that the prince is dead. When the princess dies, we are sure, that they won’t follow us. I will get her wristband, even if I have to take her entire hand.”  
They hadn’t been ten meters from Clarke, so she heard everything.  
“The only way for this, to stop transmitting my heartbeat to the ark, is for my heart to stop beating!”  
She wouldn’t let some punks get her down.

Octavia was sitting away from the camp, when Atom came to her: “It’s not safe for you, to sit here all alone.”  
“Go away, nanny!”  
“I’m not your nanny.”  
“No, you’re Bellamy’s bitch.”  
“I’m nobody’s bitch.”  
“We’ll see.” Octavia stood up and walked to the camp. Atom could see, how she walked up to a big guy called Dax. She flirted with him, kissed him and winked at him as she sauntered to the dropship.  
Octavia was on the top-level of the dropship and looked at the ladder in expectation. Dax’ head came up, but disappeared seconds later. Then Atom came up: “This guy, you just wanted to fuck, is a dangerous criminal: He beat a man to death. You know, I think I protected him from you.”  
He closed the trapdoor, which was the only entrance to the level. The sound of it being locked.  
Octavia reacted furiously: “What do you think you’re doing? I spent 16 years beneath a floor-board! This is nothing!”  
“Could you please cool down a little?”, Monty asked, who had been working on the radio, unnoticed by Octavia.  
“Sorry. Can I help you somehow?”  
“Actually, yes you can: I need an intact wristband, as a transmitter.”  
“You can have mine.”  
“What about Bellamy? He wouldn’t like you to help me finish this radio.”  
“And I hope, you’ll finish it, before he comes back. He’s been leader long enough.”

At first, Wells had feared, that Murphy would attack him again, like he had, when he had stayed at the dropship, but either, letting his father think, that he was dead, was enough satisfaction for him, or, much more likely, Bellamy held him back, to save the energy.  
However, that did not mean, they made it easy on him: “How do you feel about Spacewalker?”, Bellamy started.  
“What do you mean?”  
“He gets your girl.”, Murphy mocked.  
“What are you talking about?”, Wells tried to play down their mocking, but he knew, what the were referring to.  
“Clarke might be the only person, who doesn’t see, that you love her. But, you are invisible for her. Instead, she’s alone with Finn right now.”  
Wells ignored them for a few minutes, when Finn showed up: “We found a place where it’s shallow enough to cross.”

They caught up to Clarke. Even though the water was only about waist-deep, she was wet from head to toe. She held Jasper’s googles. “He came this way.”  
Finn looked at some footprints near the riverbed. “It was a single person. Jasper was carried this way.”, he stated, pointing at the footprints and some broken twigs.  
“So you’re a tracker now?”, Murphy asked, not wanting to follow another person.  
“You should have actually paid attention in earth-skills, maybe than Pike wouldn’t have beaten you.” Murphy tensed further:  
Before they had been seated in the dropship, they had a week of earth-skills classes by Pike. At the end of their last lesson, he had started to beat the crap out of Murphy, until Jasper and Octavia, followed by others, had started to attack him in return, while others tried to get the guards attention.

The group followed Finn, until they came to a clearing. On the other side of the clearing was a wide tree-stomp of about four meter height. Tied to the stomp was an unconscious Jasper. Clarke marched forward, but was stopped by Wells, he had grabbed her arm, when she fell into a pit-fall-trap.  
They pulled her out.  
“So that’s why he’s still alive: He’s live-bait.”, Bellamy guessed.  
Finn started to climb up to Jasper and Wells wanted to help him, but this time he was stopped: “No, you watch over Bellamy. You,”, he pointed at Murphy,” come up here.” Murphy looked to Bellamy, who nodded.  
They started untying Jasper, when the reason for the pit-fall-trap became apparent: A panther came from the woods. In the high grass, his black fur didn’t give away his position.  
“Shot it, before it comes to close!”, Clarke shouted to Bellamy, who had just been standing there, motionless. When he grab at his belt, the gun was gone.  
Wells lifted his arms, the guns in his hands. He shot and the recoil nearly hit the gun out of his fingers.  
He gripped it more tightly and shot multiple times at the moving shape in the grass.  
A black mass emerged from the sea of stalks and launched towards Clarke.  
A last bang followed by a few clicks stopped the panthers movements, allowing Clarke to dodge the flying body.  
“Congratulations; Now she sees you.”, Bellamy commented Wells’ shooting. The gun was empty now, so he had no reason to take it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, that the series episodes are the other way around, but I thought of it like:  
> Losing Jasper: Earth kills  
> Working to get him back: Earth skills


	4. Healing

“Those leave-bandages seemed to have an antibiotic effect. He doesn’t have an infection yet, but soon I’ll have to change them. Were there any other injuries, while I was gone?” No one said anything against Clarke being Bellamy’s opposition in terms of leadership, when it came apparent, that the most important skills; Monty’s crafting, Finn’s tracking and most notably her own medical abilities, were with her:

“Can you make me an implant?”, Octavia had asked her, when Jasper had been laid safely into the top-level of the dropship.  
“I wish I could. I’d need a lot of supplies and a sample of your bonemarrow. And I don’t have the know-how to make an implant, even if I had everything I’d need. To get them out would be easy, but putting one in is a lot of work even when you already have the implant.”  
She shouldn’t have said that out loud, because seconds later half the delinquents asked her to remove their implants. At the start she tried keep some sense of order by making a list with the names and abilities, but many have been arrested before puberty and like Finn didn’t know anything.  
The removals were, thanks to Clarke’s ability, easy: she opened the upper arm and then just grabbed the implant and pulled it from the bone; then she stitched the wound closed. By the end the procedure took her mere minutes. It could have only gone faster with her mother’s ability to regrow any organic tissue in seconds.  
The mutants immediately headed out to taste their new form of freedom.  
A boy that went by Schwarz gave quite a show. His last name translated to black, and his ability was to turn every surface, including eye-lenses, around him black, rendering everybody blind. Due to the extreme darkness even those outside of his blackness couldn’t see anything inside. His best friend could cause every sound he ever heard. Not like he was imitating it, but more like he had telekinetic control over an invisible stereo-system.  
Finn had a super-smell (“I always thought, I just had a good nose. It’s not that obvious on the ark with all these airlocks. When I was arrested a guard hit my nose. Next thing I remember, I’m in medical and the smell of disinfection-alcohol is stuck.”).

The next day Jasper’s bandages needed to be changed. Wells insisted on coming with Clarke and Finn. The bandages were made of some kind of kelp and thus undetectable for Finn.  
They found the remnants of a car, but, due to the urgency of their task, decided to check it out later.  
When they reached a river, with the kelp growing in it, the boys made plans about how to get it, without entering the dangerous water, as Clarke simple waded in.  
Suddenly Finn stiffened. Then a flock of black bats emerged from the forest and flew their way. “We have to flee, they are are afraid. Whatever can harm them, can ouch!”, Finn pulled Clarke out of the river, when they could see, what caused his pain: from where the bats had come from came a yellow fog-like cloud rapidly spreading their way.  
They managed to find shelter from the fog in the car, they had found earlier. With their clothes they made sure, that the fog wouldn’t come in.  
Since they were trapped they tried to salvage what they could. Finn found a bottle of apparently drinkable alcohol (“alcoholic drinks are supposed to be toxic.” “We’re on the ground; everything is toxic.”). Despite Wells protests Finn and Clarke took some.  
When the fog cleared, they headed back.  
The camp was in chaos. Before Clarke went in, she saw Bellamy motioning her to come. Next to him lay someone. It was Atom. “When the fog came, we went into a cave. He was just behind me.” The boys skin was nearly completely dissolved. Like the trees, his clothes seemed to be unaffected by the fog. When he opened his mouth to breath, Clarke saw a mess of blood.  
It wasn’t the first time, she saw a patient, that was beyond help. When she had helped out in medical, she had seen her mother often enough forced to give up. She sometimes had had patients on her own, but never anything she couldn’t handle.  
She faced Bellamy: “His insides..” “I know,”, he interrupted her. Instead he held the grip of his knife towards her. She nodded but didn’t take the knife. She got down next to the boy and held his head by his neck. His whole body went numb immediately. “Listen this is hard to fix. Try to calm. I will knock you out, so you won’t panic when I start my work....”, she said calmly, as she moved her hand towards the back of his head. His eyes fell closed. The beehive, that had been his brain got still from one moment to the next. No medication could cause a less painful death.

On the ark Abigail Griffin did not feel much better than her daughter: after the 100 left, Thelonius Jaha was found with a shot-wound. When she came out of medical, she was arrested, because she used more, than the allowed amount of medication and blood-reserves to save the Chancellor. Just when she could feel the pressure in the airlock drop in her ears, Jaha pardoned her. She came back to the control-room, only to find a few of the kids to be dead. From the records she could argue, that the first two died because of injuries acquired during the landing. But the only argument, that spoke against the theory, that earth was radioactive and uninhabitable, was, that they died one after the other and not at once. Every time, she left the room, friends and family of the delinquents asked her about them. The official excuse, why nobody could see them was still, that the had a highly infectious sickness.  
Especially Finns girlfriend Raven Reyes didn’t buy it and could tell, that Abby hid something.  
When another one flat-lined she heard a thud. Looking for the cause, she wasn’t even surprised, to find Raven eavesdropping in the air-duct. “How do you tell, they’re dead?”  
“We monitor them with wristbands.” There was no sense in denying anything right now.  
“They take them off, they don’t die. They don’t want us to follow them” Raven stated.  
Abby looked at the screens: Raven’s theory made sense. The only one, who suddenly flat-lined, was Wells Jaha. Prior to his “death” his vitals had spiked, indicating a fight, but no lethal injury. Likely Bellamy and his friends had attacked him to take his wristband off.  
She made sure, Raven remained free. She could definitely use the smart girls help.


	5. A chapter without fun

On the ground Clarke had long given up, caring about the delinquents taking of the wristbands. Finn sat down next to her. “What did Wells do?”, he asked.  
When she didn’t answer he pushed further:” I can tell, you hate him, but he behaves like the perfect boyfriend. Do you even know he loves you?”  
“We’ve been best friends since we were four.”  
“I can tell, but what changed?... I won’t give up, until you tell me!”  
“HE KILLED DAD! … As you already know, he was floated, because he wanted to go public about the system failure and the council found out and stopped him. I told Wells about dad’s plan and the chancellors boy ran off to his father.”  
“Are you sure, it was him, who ratted your father out?”  
“Why do you even ask? I only told him!”  
“He doesn’t seem to be feeling guilty. He never tried to apologize for it. The question is not 'Who did you tell?' but 'Who knew?'”  
When Clarke asked Wells directly, he admitted, that he didn’t tell his father. He had covered the traitor, he let Clarke hate him. So she wouldn’t hate her mother.  
She wanted to hurt her, so she went to the dropship. “And?” “Yes your wristband is still working. I just have to hook it up with the dropship, and we should have a radio.”

After the fog they had called the boy vision: when those who had died last left the camp, he had approached them and thrown yellow dust of unknown origin at them, and then said something along the lines of: “For your last journey on the ground.”  
So the boy in front of vision was scared as hell, when vision went blank and started to talk:” 99 bodies will go underground but some will not know. Someone carried the dead and now he joined them. Staining the innocent blade will cause the killer’s death and the hangmen’s murder.”

When they found Wells’ body, Clarke was shocked. The boy, vision had spoken to, had taken over Wells’ position as an undertaker. He hadn’t mentioned the prophecy to anybody yet.  
Everybody thought, that the grounders had killed Wells and thus had worked hard in building a wall and making weapons.

Murphy’s knife was found, together with Wells’ fingers. A mob had gathered and tried to execute him. Only after Bellamy had kicked a box from under Murphy’s legs to let him hang, someone other than Clarke spoke up:  
” I killed Wells!”, Charlotte shouted.  
Murphy wanted Charlotte to be hanged, like everybody wanted him to be hanged seconds ago.  
Finn lead Clarke and Charlotte to a bunker, but when they slept, Charlotte left.  
She didn’t want anybody else to be harmed because of her. Murphy and his fellows saw, as she leaped to her death.  
Murphy was banished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So vision is a little bit like Cassandra from the Iliad, in a way that nobody reacts effectivly to his profecies.  
> He mainly exists, because I like making up characters


	6. Raven lands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I´m really bad at describing feelings, especially romance, so please just pretend some of the scene were good

On the ark Raven stood in front of Abby. “So, what do you want fixed?” “This”, said the doctor, as she unveiled an old escape pod. “I have ten days to proof, that the ground is survivable, or 320 people will be killed, to save oxygen. I want to go to the ground and radio back.”  
Raven held her hand beneath the pod. It rose from the ground shakily, as it was balanced on one point. Raven laid on the on her back and got beneath the box. She held out her other hand and the pod stabilized a little. “The outside appears to be completely intact. If that applies to the sealing as well, it’s possible. I have one condition: I’m coming with you.”  
“Okay”  
“You just got yourself a mechanic.”

Nine days later, Raven was almost finished. “I need a pressure-regulator.”  
“Could you start without it?”  
“Start yes, but we’d die on our way down: the air-pressure in the ark is similar to that on the ground. The sealing of the pod can hold that in space only for so long, before we have to counter with the compressed air in the tanks. I’ll be right back.”  
“Where are you going?”  
“The less you know...”

Clarke, Finn, Octavia and some other delinquents stood behind Monty and Jasper.  
“As soon, as these two wires are connected, the ark should see Clarke’s vitals spiking. With these controls, I can send then send messages coded as Morse.”  
“So this is the last step.”, Jasper made sure, that he understood his friend right.  
“The honor is yours.”  
Jasper connected the wires. The second they made contact, there was an omnipresent clicking sound.  
Jasper and Monty looked in shock at their arms: their wristbands had opened.  
“What happened?”, Clarke broke the silence in the dropship.  
“I think, that those wristbands must also have some kind of receiver. I must have shorted them.”

Finn stormed out of the camp, Clarke followed him. He got back into the bunker, he had lead her and Charlotte to.  
He was raging around, flipping the table and throwing things.  
“Finn calm down! It’s okay!”  
“How? Everybody I know thinks we are dead! Now I’m alone!”  
“No! We are not alone!”, Clarke grabbed his head and turned it, so they stood face to face. “You are not alone!”  
She kissed him. It had been to long, since the last time, she could feel affection; their kissing became more intimate.

Monty was analyzing the damage. He found out, that the wristbands were not fried, but switched of, contrary to what he had thought earlier. However, he wouldn’t be able, to use them for parts, since he couldn’t open the tough casing, without destroying the sensible parts inside.  
Inside the dropship, Jasper was sitting in a corner.  
Octavia came over and sat next to him.  
“You probably shouldn’t sit next to me.”  
“And why is that?”  
“I am cursed.”  
“What makes you say that?”  
“I got speared, I got beaten up and I blew up the radio!”  
“You pulled me out of the river, when I was attacked by a giant snake, you were the first to cross the river and you stood up to a bully! The radio would have blown up anyway. You are not cursed, you are brave! And bravery is rewarded.”, Octavia leaned over and kissed Jasper.

Clarke and Finn were lying naked next to each other in the bunker.  
“Finn?”  
“Yes?”  
“I just want you to know: I didn’t just want to be with anybody. I wanted to be with you!”  
“Well, then I should tell you: I was about to have my first earth sex anyway; You were there, you looked passably good,...”  
“Asshole”  
They both chuckled. Clarke felt good, being a normal girl for once again.

Raven went to the canteen. Nygel knew her. “I need a pressure-regulator.”  
“What for?”  
“Regulate pressure.”  
“Listen, getting equipment is dangerous for me, so you better make it worth it.”  
“Just tell me your price.”  
“I owe the chief of electrical a favor. He likes young, pretty girls like you.”  
“You want me to sleep with the chief of electrical?”  
“Apparently you don’t need to regulate pressure as badly, as you thought. Your mother would have taken the offer, though, in fact she did, often.”  
Raven stormed out and tried her best, to tell herself, she hadn’t heard that.  
She told Abby about her attempt, to get the pressure-regulator.  
The next day Abby came to the hangar with a pressure-regulator.  
“How?”  
“The less you know, the better. Hurry up. Whatever happens from now, I want you, to start that pod.”  
“You will be floated.”  
“It only takes one of us, to give the signal to save 300 lives.”  
Abby got a message from Jackson. “Abby did you steal morphine?”  
“Did you already make inventory?”  
“No, Kane was here. He’s on the way to Mecha to arrest you.”

“How much time do you need?”  
“Ten minutes?”  
“They’ll be here in five. You’ll have to leave without me.”  
Abby left the room, to wait in the corridor for her arrest.  
Raven didn’t even try to install the pressure-regulator. It would have taken her half an hour, provided it’d be even functional. Instead, she took the old spacesuit, that had been salvaged together with the pod from an old Russian space-station. She repurposed a bottle of compressed air to a source of oxygen, put on the suit, closed it and tried to breath. When she didn’t feel the overpressure of the bottle, she deemed it save enough, entered the pod and launched it.  
“I’m coming Finn.”

“Hey look a shooting-star!”  
“Quick you have to wish for something!”  
Clarke and Finn sat next to each other.  
“What has some rock burning in the atmosphere to do with my wishes. Besides... I don’t know what to wish for.”  
“Back then, people believed, shooting-stars would grant wishes, princess romance-killer.”  
They stared for a few seconds, before Clarke realized, that it didn’t fade, but instead became bigger.  
“That´s an escape-pod. Probably a supply-drop.”  
They ran back to the camp.

“Bellamy, let’s go!”  
“I won’t go there now. And you won’t either. We wait for first light.”

Of course Bellamy went out to find the pod, or more precisely the radio, that was likely in there, before Clarke or Finn got there.  
Finn and Clarke noticed soon and followed him.  
“I can smell Bellamy himself in that direction, but from this direction comes a burnt smell. I guess the pod is there. We should split up, I try to catch Bellamy, before he finds you.”  
“Okay, we’ll meet at the pod.”


	7. Worst firework in 300 years

Raven woke up. She unsealed the helmet and took it of. She was not dead. She had a wound on her head of unknown origin. The door opened.  
Clarke was surprised to find a girl around her age in the pod. She helped her out of the pod and the suit. “Welcome home!”  
“I always dreamed, that it’d smell like that. Is that rain?”  
“Yes.”

Finn realized, that Bellamy was already on his way back to the dropship, when a familiar scent meet his nose.

“Raven?”  
“Finn! I knew, you’re not dead.”  
“Clarke, she’s bleeding.”  
“Clarke? You’re Clarke Griffin?”  
“Yes.”  
“Your mother helped me. This”, Raven gestured at the pod, “was her idea.”

Clarke saw, how Raven was looking at Finn. She kept her distance to Raven and just gave Finn a clean rug, to press at Raven’s head wound.  
“You built this thing to see me?”, Finn marveled.  
“More like rebuild. If I finished five minutes later..”  
Raven got back up and hastily began searching the pod. “Damn, the radio is gone. I must have lost it during reentry. I should have fixed it better, I’m so stupid,...”  
“Bellamy!”, Clarke and Finn said in unison.

Bellamy wasn’t hurrying on his way back to the dropship, so they caught up to him.  
“Where’s the radio?”  
“I don’t know, what your talking about.”  
“Cut the bullshit, Blake. We know, you took it.”  
“You’re to late.”  
“You are Bellamy Blake? You shot the chancellor!”  
Bellamy pushed Raven against a tree threateningly. Raven didn’t flinch. Instead she threatened Bellamy back with his own knife.  
“Tell me, where my radio is, or, different than Jaha, you won’t be alive by tomorrow.”  
“What?”  
“You´re a lousy shot. Jaha’s still alive and in a few hours 320 people will be killed to save air.”, Raven paraphrased what had happened on the ark.  
Bellamy looked rueful. “Like I said:'It’s to late'. I threw it in a river.”

They got a big group, to search the river. When they finally found the radio, Raven had bad news: ”Bellamy did some damage to that thing. I may be able to fix this, but not until it’s dried.”  
“So I killed 320 people.”  
“Wait,... we don’t have to actually talk to them. We just have to let them know, we’re alive...”  
Minutes later Raven was directing the delinquents to take the escape-pod apart.  
“Clarke, can you hold this for me? I want someone with a steady hand to do this. Rocketfuel likes to go boom!”  
She handed Clarke a wrench and instructed her to hold it in a particular way, for Raven to excerpt the Hydrazine from the pod’s retrorockets. She noticed Clarke’s unease, but chose to ignore it. She would talk about it, when she felt like it, and they had more urgent things at hand.  
Raven had created an array of small rockets, that carried, what was essentially a bomb with the little magnesium Raven could extract from the dropship and the pod in the short time. The other delinquents made starting-ramps. The rockets were supposed to be launched into the air, travel for a few seconds, and then, on their highest point, the bombs should blow up, functioning as flares, that should, good weather provided, be visible from the ark.  
The delinquents celebrated the firework. No one counted the explosions. If someone did, he would have asked Raven why there was one explosion less, then there had been rockets. She would then become alarmed, and would have explained, that likely one of the bombs had been blind, and could detonate on the ground, about 5 kilometers east to their position. Clarke might have suggested, to gather a group, to extinguish a forest-fire, before it became a danger to them. This group would have had the chance, to prevent a war.  
But nobody counted the explosions.


	8. Losing, getting back and losing again

On the ark, the firework filled Abby with mixed feelings. On the one side, it meant, that the kids were still alive, as she hoped. On the other side, the sign came to late.  
She had been allowed to go free, to help cope with the full sick-bay, due to the oxygen-withdrawal in the whole ark, when she decided, that Jake had been right: The people deserved to know. She locked herself in the control-room and broadcasted the message Jake had recorded prior to his arrest. Jake had been right. Minutes later a crowd had gathered in front of the counsel-hall. The first one, to speak to the council, was a man, whose daughter was going blind, because of the oxygen-withdrawal. “Count me in.”  
“What?”  
“A few hours ago, you told me, that my daughter is going blind, and there is nothing I could do. Now I heard, that I can buy you guys time, that I can save her.”  
He left a wristband on the table.  
Over 400 people volunteered to let themselves get killed. About 100 got declined for various reasons.  
“I need your signature, Chancellor.” Marcus Kane was still fraught, even though the expected chaos didn’t happen.  
“What for, Marcus?”  
“The order, to cut sector 17 from the net.”  
“How many will be in there?”  
“324 people. We had far more volunteers but we had to decline a lot; mainly essential personal and minors. After you have given the signature, in six hours, they will go to sector 17. then you will give the final order.”  
“Okay, I will sign. But you will give the order. As the new chancellor.”  
“What are you talking about?”  
“In six hours, I will be in sector 17, inspecting repairs in the hull. You will be the new chancellor.”  
“No, we need you. We need someone, who can inspire us, to give us hope. I can’t do that.”  
“Jake inspired those people, I didn’t. All I did, was hesitating to do, what I thought, had to be done. I didn’t have the strength, you had. We have hard times still ahead of us and the ark needs a strong chancellor.”  
“Yes, I was willing to kill 320 people, to save us, but you are a good man. Someone, who is willing to kill, to save himself is easy to find. But you were present at every single floating. You were responsible and now you wanted to let yourself get killed. What the people of the ark now need, is not a strong leader, but a leader they can trust and I am not that man.”  
And so Jaha stood at the door to sector 17 and thanked every single one, who entered, for their sacrifice.

He was with Abby, staring out of a window, when he saw it: roughly at the position of Washington DC, the capitol of the United States of America, there could been seen some kind of light, or shimmering in the clouds.  
Instead of the usual method, it was decided publicly, that the bodies of the volunteers would be thrown to earth as some kind of funeral.  
The council-meeting was cruel: due to her usefulness she wouldn’t be floated. She had to resign as a counselor. Kane refused to hope, that what half the ark had seen, in fact had been Raven and the 100.  
Then Raven’s voice could be heard throughout the whole ark. Because nobody ever saw the need to prevent it, every signal, coming from the earth, was received by every instrument capable of wireless communication.  
“This is Raven Reyes. I’m sending from earth. The 100 are alive! Ark station do you read? I need doctor Abigail Griffin!”  
Her signal was isolated and the other receivers were cut off.  
“Raven, you’re alive!”  
“So are most of the 100.” It was Clarke’s voice. “Finn got stabbed to the chest by a grounder.”  
“Grounder? Do you mean there are survivors on the ground?”  
“Yes, but right now we need my mum! Finn has a knife in his chest. It didn’t breach through to the lung or the heart, but it’s close.” She could hear Raven chasing people out of the room.  
“Okay, calm down Clarke, he got lucky, all you need to do, is get the knife out and stop the bleeding. But there’s also bad news: the storm over your camp will worsen so we will lose contact to you for a while. Now take the knife and pull it out straight.”  
Next she heard mostly interference and some rumbling, than a loud bang.  
“Clarke!?”  
“We’re alive, Finn’s alright.” Clarke was heard again.  
“Okay, you got through the worst, now you just have to close the wound. You did that a hundred times, when you helped me in medical. Do you have something to cover it?”  
“We’ll make something do.”  
When Finn was treated, Abby tried to talk to her daughter.  
She lost contact.  
The next thing they heard was:”Dr. Griffin, Finn is to warm!” Raven was worried.  
“Don’t worry. He lost some blood a little fewer is normal.”  
“No, mum … hot … blade...” they lost contact again.


	9. Hostage

For Clarke it begin shortly after the firework. They saw the burial from the ground and figured, what happened. Bellamy was additionally stressed, because Octavia was missing. Finn confirmed, that Octavia wasn’t in the camp.  
Two groups left the camp: Clarke and Raven went to the bunker, Finn had found, to find parts for the radio. Bellamy, Finn, Jasper and some others went out to find Octavia.  
Clarke and Raven’s journey was tense but went of without a hitch.

Finn lead his group to a steep scarp. Octavia had fallen down there and probably hurt herself badly in the process. On the ground were footsteps. Finn explained, that someone had picked Octavia up and carried her. Then Finn lost the smell-track. “How?”  
“He probably knew about my ability. You see this tree-sap? It’s blocks my nose. I can still use traditional methods, but he might have covered these tracks, too.”  
They reached a border. They could tell, because there were stakes with old corpses skewered on them.  
From there it went downhill. The grounders had attacked them from the trees, they hunted them with spears, chased them into traps.

Suddenly they heard a fog-horn and the grounders fled.  
Finn had packed a tent, to hide from the fog.  
“How do we know, the fog is gone?”  
“We don’t.”  
Bellamy just opened the tent and looked out. Everything was clear.  
“Must have been a false alarm.” Then they saw a single grounder.  
“I don’t think he saw us.” he went after the grounder.  
“Are you going to kill him?”  
“I’m going to catch him. He’s going to tell me, where Octavia is. Then I kill him.”

Octavia was going for a walk, when she heard something. She started running. It was a mistake. She fell down a scarp. She felt pain in her leg and her head. Then she saw a man.  
“Don’t touch me!” She felt like she was losing consciousness and didn’t want to kill anybody while asleep. When she felt him picking her up, she fully concentrated on keeping her aura off.

She woke up. She was in a cave. There was a bandage around her head. The man, who picked her up, must have tended for her wounds. The wound on her leg looked bad and was still bleeding, but it was wet and appeared to be clean.  
There seemed to be a fire somewhere in the cave.  
The grounder came back. He had a red-hot blade in his hand. She struggled. With the pain, she would let her aura out. She didn’t want to. He overpowered her. He pressed the blade at her wound.  
She screamed.  
When he took it away, she lost conscious.

When she woke up, she felt much better. The grounder was not laying dead to her feet. Octavia hated her mutation. It made her lonely. The wound on her leg was scorched from the blade and had been cleaned again. She could walk again.  
Octavia got up. She picked up antlers, that were lying around. Since no one on earth had died from her aura, he may not know about it.  
She wanted him to know, that she would fight for her freedom.  
Besides she could use it, to lean on, if her leg got weak.  
She soon found an exit. It were some bars in the roof. She couldn’t open them from the inside.  
She found a built wall. After some tugging she could pull out some stones, to reveal a tunnel, leading to the surface. It was dark and tight.  
Claustrophobia was her strongest demon. When she crawled through it, her aura drained the live out of the critters, that normally inhabited this tunnel.  
“I am not afraid!” She had faced this demon for sixteen years.  
On the surface, she heard noise and voices: of course her brother had gathered a search-party. She ran towards the noise. She saw a familiar girl and wanted to call out, when she was gripped and her mouth was held shut by strong hands. The grounder had found her. She didn’t struggle, when she saw the girl, she recognized her as Roma, got a spear to her chest. Unlike Jasper, she did not get a warning shot.  
The grounder took the hand, covering her mouth away. She didn’t call out. He dragged her back into the cave. Back in the room, where she woke up, he pressed her to the ground. Suddenly she found herself chained to the wall. Than he left again. She wouldn’t kill him, just to free herself. After all, he had just tried to keep her safe. But when she heard him coming back, she grabbed the next thing, that she could fit in her hand. When he got close enough, she hit his head. Apparently she could throw a punch, he was out cold. She took the key for the chains. When she wanted to free herself, she was startled by the sound of multiple people entering the cave. The key fell down. It would be hard to reach it, where it was now.  
Then she saw, who entered: Bellamy, Jasper and Finn.  
Bellamy freed her. Then he wanted to kill the grounder.  
“No, he saved me!”  
“His people killed four of ours today!”  
Finn examined at the grounder’s equipment curiously. He was looking at his horn, when the grounder woke up and stabbed him in the chest. Then he grabbed his spear and attacked Bellamy. He fell down again. Jasper stood behind him, with a club.  
They immediately went back to the dropship, Bellamy carrying Finn. Clarke was in the first level with Raven. They were both already tense, the sight caused them to panic.  
“I need to talk to my mother, she knows, what I have to do!”  
“But the radio still doesn’t work.”  
“Then fix it! I do my best, so he won’t die!”  
She had one hand as close to the knife, as she dared, to keep the blood-flow in that area as slow as possible. With the other hand, she took the bottle of moonshine, to disinfect everything.  
“This is Raven Reyes. I’m sending from earth. The 100 are alive! Ark station do you read? I need doctor Abigail Griffin!”, Raven called into the radio over and over.  
All off the sudden, she got an answer.  
“Raven, you’re alive!”  
“So are most of the 100.” Clarke shouted “Finn got stabbed to the chest by a grounder.”  
“Grounder? Do you mean there are survivors on the ground?”, that was Jaha’s voice.  
“Yes, but right now we need my mum! Finn has a knife in his chest. It didn’t breach through to the lung or the heart, but it’s close.”, Clarke explained impatiently. It was getting stormy outside and so the room got crowded. Raven pushed and shoved the people up the ladder. The last to enter, before Raven closed the hatch were Bellamy and Jasper. The had abducted the grounder.

“Okay, calm down Clarke, he got lucky, all you need to do, is get the knife out and stop the bleeding. But there’s also bad news: the storm... lose c... Now... out straight.”  
She guessed, what her mother had said. She gripped the knife firmly and began to slowly move it out. She almost had it out, when something hit the dropship. The lights were out for a few seconds. When she could see again, Finn was lying on the floor, next to the table, he had been a moment ago.  
He was alive.  
“Clarke!?”  
“We’re alive, Finn’s alright.”  
“Okay, you... the worst, now... close the wound...t a hundred times... Do you have something to cover it?”  
“We’ll make something do.”  
She sewed the wound closed with some wire.  
“Clarke, I want to talk to you.”  
She just switched the radio off. She could blame it on the storm.  
Raven switched it back on again.”Dr. Griffin, Finn is to warm!” Clarke checked, what she was talking about.  
“Don’t worry. He lost some blood a little fewer is normal.”, came from the radio  
“No, mum, Finn is to hot. I think the blade was poisoned” They had lost contact.  
On the top floor, Bellamy had tied up the grounder and was questioning him. So far the grounder hadn’t opened his mouth. Clarke had left Finn to Raven’s care and now entered:”You poisoned the blade. Tell me what to do!”  
Miller, on of Bellamy’s most trusted men, had searched the grounder’s pouch. Had found some vials.  
“You had to be stupid to use poison without an antidote at hand.” Clarke took the vials and held them towards the grounder. “Which one?”  
No answer.  
“He’s not going to talk.”  
“What’s your course?”  
“Pain.”, Bellamy deadpanned.  
Clarke saw no other way to save Finn. “Do it.”  
Bellamy cut down the grounder’s clothes. Than he used a strap to whip him.  
No answer.  
Raven came up.  
“He stopped breathing!”  
“What?”  
“He started again, but I won’t let him stop again.”  
“He won’t talk.”  
“I’ll make him sing!”  
She ripped open some panels and got two cables.  
“What are you doing?”  
“I show him something he doesn’t know.”  
She held the cables at his torso.  
No answer.  
Than Octavia pulled Raven away. In her hand was the knife, that had been in Finn’s chest.  
She drew the knife across her arm. Than she pointed the blade on one of the vials.  
Without a word, the grounder tilted his head to the right.  
Octavia picked up one vial.  
He nodded.  
She gave the vial to Clarke.  
“Make sure, you don’t get an infection.”  
Clarke was in doctor-mode. She gave Finn the antidote then closed Octavia’s cut.


	10. Coming to terms

Finn woke up.  
“Hey,...”  
“Don’t. You have a girlfriend, I was there, I looked passably cute. There’s nothing to talk about with me.”  
She woke up Raven, who had kept guard all night.” He’s awake. He asked about you.”  
Raven knew Clarke was lying, but she didn’t care. She had already confronted Clarke, after they left the bunker and she had seen the token Finn had made Clarke. Clarke had been honest and had protected Finn: for all he had known, she had been dead. Then they were busy saving his life. Now Clarke more or less had given him to her. She knew, that Finn was looking over her shoulder at Clarke, but she chose to ignore it.  
Clarke had transferred Finn to his tent, under the condition, that he stayed in bed.  
The radio was working fine. Raven had upgraded it. It now was a terminal, with a headset and a screen. Till now Clarke had been able to avoid talking to her mother. The council had given them the coordinates of a bunker, so Clarke went to Bellamy.  
“We have a mission.”  
“Why me?”  
“I don’t feel like being with anybody I actually like.”  
“Okay, we’ll meet in a few minutes.”  
The next one to go to the terminal was Dax.  
On the other side was not his mother, but Commander Shumway.  
“Are you alone?”  
“Yes, where is my mother.”  
“You can talk to her soon, but first I have an offer for you. You were imprisoned, because you beat a man to death.”  
“He stole from me.”  
“I can grant your mother a place on the first ship down and you a career, when I’m down.”  
“What do I have to do?”  
“You just have to keep your mouth closed. And kill Bellamy Blake.”  
“Okay.”  
Dax was chosen, because he was a grunt. He had killed someone on the ark, instead of just telling the guard. He was strong, but stupid. So stupid, he didn’t think about talking to Clarke and Bellamy about Shumway’s call. There was no way, to actually check, if Bellamy was alive.  
But Dax did not think. He just followed Clarke and Bellamy and waited for them to split up.

In the Camp the delinquents were busy preparing food for the winter. Monty and Jasper were packing nuts.  
Suddenly Jasper approached Octavia:”They’re here! Either I’m going crazy or they’re here!”  
“Who?”  
“The grounders!” He ate another nut.  
“Did you eat nothing but these all day?”  
“Doesn’t matter anymore. We’re all going to die soon, so I just came over, to tell you, that I love you, but we’re still going to die.”  
“You’re high. Okay, don’t panic. Just sit here and hold this.”, Octavia said, ignoring the love-part.  
“It’s a stick.”  
“It’s an anti-grounder-stick. That makes sense.”  
“Yeah, makes sense.” he got more quiet and stayed in the seat.  
Time for Octavia, to repay a livedebt.

Clarke and Bellamy had found the bunker. It was not locked. The first thing they noticed, was the smell: 300 years without humans had left the architecture intact, but allowed small live to inhabit the place. The door must have been closed improperly.  
It was not useable as a winter-quarter. Clarke opened a crate and found some still useable blankets. The journey was not in vain. Bellamy opened a barrel. He locked at a liquid. He tasted it. It was grease. Frustrated he kicked it over.  
The clanking of metal on concrete was heard. In the barrel had been assault-rifles.  
“This changes everything! No more running away, no more fear of the grounders.”  
“I know, we need them, but I’m still uncertain about bringing them back to camp. I mean: Who gets access? Who controls them?”  
“You need to learn, how to use them!” Bellamy drew a mark on some fabric and got into shooting-stance. Clarke imitated his stance, pressed the rifle against her left shoulder and pulled the trigger.  
With a bang a whole hole appeared in the cloth, about half a meter from the center of the mark.  
“I’ll show you, how it’s done.” His practical experience was about the same as hers but he showed great self-confidence. He aimed and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He ejected the bullet.  
“Some of them must become duds.” His next one was a dud as well. Then he hit the mark.  
“You put Miller in charge of the camp, while we’re gone, you must trust him.”, Clarke tried to get back to responsibility for the guns.  
“I trust nobody, but he does good work and most of the others follow him. You should get in good terms with him for later.”  
“That’s why you packed so many rations earlier. You want to leave.”  
“They will kill me, when they come here. Best thing to happen, they throw me in a box for the rest of my live and I won’t give Jaha that kind of satisfaction. Keep on training, I go get some air.”  
When Bellamy was gone, the nuts, Clarke had eaten, kicked in: The gun bended in her hands, till the barrel faced her. She grinned. Part of knew, she was hallucinating or dreaming, but she still took what she saw next serious.  
She was in her solitary-cell on the ark. Next to her was her father.  
“How?”  
“I think 'Why?' is more important than 'How?', don’t you think, kiddo?”  
“You want me to forgive her.”  
“You know, she did not want this, kiddo.”  
Clarke sat down, pouting.  
“She doesn’t deserve my forgiveness.”  
“Let me tell something, little one: Forgiveness is never earned.”  
“I guess you’re right. I miss you.”  
“To bad.” His voice began to shift, as Clarke looked at him bewildered.  
“I don’t care” It was Dax’ voice. She lost consciousness.

Bellamy was outside the bunker, when he met Thelonius Jaha. “Why are you here?”  
“I am here, because of you.”  
“Do you want to kill me?”  
“I am here, because you shot me at the ark, but unlike the others, I survived your treason.”  
Then the others appeared. 320 faces, all familiar to Bellamy, all accusing him.  
“Murderer.”  
“Murderer.”  
“Murderer.”  
“Murderer.”

“Please kill me!” Bellamy was on his knees, begging Jaha. Jaha’s answer was a kick.  
“You want to die?”  
Bellamy got up and received a hit to the face.  
“You think, you deserve the salvation of death?”  
Another kick.  
“You think, that’s why I am here?”  
Another kick.  
“What do you want from me?”  
“I want you to fight, Bellamy Blake! Breath, fight, suffer, live! You owe it to them!”  
Bellamy opened his eyes and got up.  
Instead of Jaha, Dax was standing above him. He held one of the guns, that they had just found.  
Bellamy saw the handgun, he had shot Jaha with, on the ground. When he aimed it at Dax, his hand was empty.  
“Nothing personal, but Shumway wants you dead.”  
“Drop it!” Clarke stood behind him, gun in hand. Dax turned at her. They both pulled their triggers. Both were duds. Clarke struggled to eject the bullet. She got behind a tree, when Dax was already aiming at her again and shot the tree. Bellamy jumped at him.  
They fought, but Dax had the upper hand, turning the gun-barrel towards Bellamy. Clarke launched herself at him, but his clothes were to thick for her to use her ability against him. He threw her of, but that distracted him from Bellamy long enough. He had grabbed the ejected dud and when Dax turned back, he rammed it in his throat.  
He sat down next to Clarke.  
“So you want to leave.”  
“I don’t want to, but I don’t see, how I could stay here, when Jaha comes here.”  
“You could get a pardon, like the rest of us.”  
“Why would he? I tried to kill him, to smuggle myself here.”  
“You have to talk to him.”  
“Did you talk to your mother?”  
“Guess we both will have a hard talk tomorrow.”

Clarke sat next to Bellamy, facing Chancellor Jaha.  
“Hello Chancellor, before you say something, I want you to know, that life on earth is hard. But we are still alive and well. Most of that is thanks to Bellamy Blake.”  
“Noted. Now, why does the person, who tried to kill me, want to talk to me?”  
“I want a full pardon.”  
“I can’t do that. Not when I don’t know, who gave you the gun.”  
“It’s:'Either I get a pardon, or you won’t learn, who on the ark wants you dead'.”  
“Bellamy Blake, in my function as the chancellor of the ark I hereby pardon you of your crimes.”

Kane went with only two guards, to arrest Commander Shumway. “You are a disgrace to that uniform.”  
“I did it for what I believe in. The same as you.”  
“And what would that be?”, Kane ask angrily.

Then Abby Griffin got to the radio.  
“Listen, I know, you betrayed dad.”  
“How?”  
“Wells told me, when I asked him. Do you know what he had done before? He had taken the blame! He pretended, he told Jaha, so I won’t hate you!”  
“Clarke I’m sorry, that...”  
“Mum, you told the chancellor, what dad wanted to do, you killed dad and got me thrown to the sky-box. I won’t run away from you or try to kill you, but it will take some time till I can forgive you.”  
She got up and left.


	11. Don´t negotiate drunk

The next few days went by really well. The camp was not attacked by grounders, the acid-fog had not showed up again and the creation of supply-stock for winter went well. Most of the delinquents stayed at the camp. Only Finn and Bellamy’s hunting-parties were supposed to leave the camp. Some, most of them mutants, did it anyway: Octavia just vanished from time to time, after promising Bellamy, that she would make use of her aura, if she got into danger. Schwartz and his friends were rarely seen inside the walls of the camp; considering the noise they made, everyone was fine with that. One of them talked to animals (“I asked a crow about the grounders. It said:' What’s in it for me?', then it shat on my head.”), one was making music all the time and Schwartz himself always kept himself and a wide area around him in darkness. If they had to defend the camp, the latter could come in handy. But right now it was annoying.

The grounder had escaped the day, Bellamy and Clarke had found the guns, but Unity-Day was approaching, so most of the 100 were in good mood.  
Monty had made a barrel of moonshine especially for this occasion and they watched the festivities on the ark live. Jaha was thanking the 100 for their work as pioneers and told everybody, that the first dropship would land in 60 hours, when Bellamy came to Clarke, with a cup of moonshine. “Lighten up, Princess. Don’t tell me, you don’t like Unity-Day.”  
“But...”  
“No buts. I scheduled guards, have fun once. You deserve it.”  
She looked around. There were guards patrolling the wall. She saw Finn standing alone next to the dropship.  
“Don’t tell me, you don’t like Unity-Day.” She said with a smile.  
“Unity-Day is a lie. The stations only joined after the thirteenth station was blown up, to bring the others to heel. It’s a story, we don’t like to call our history”  
“Yes, the kids-story is a lie, but after the violence, there were almost 300 years of peace.”  
“But was the violence necessary in the first place?”  
She wanted to have fun, once, so she decided to get drunk.  
Finn wasn’t the only one, who refused to enjoy the day. Raven was sitting in her tent, with piles of bullets, when Jasper came in. “Making bullets on Unity-Day?”  
“I’m sorting them.”  
“Okay, listen: I’m playing moon-ball (Beer-Ping-Pong but with moonshine) with Monroe and Harper and I heard Zero-G-Mechanics have crazy hand-eye-coordination. I think you should have some fun, too.”  
“The grounder got away and he will come back with his friends. When he does, we need to be armed. They don’t know, it’s Unity-Day!”  
“Do you know, what you are doing?”  
“Why does everybody keep asking me this?” A bullet went of in her hand.  
“You are an exceptional mechanic, but this requires a chemist. How did you do in chemistry? I was great in chemistry!” He sat next to her and sniffed one of the bullets.  
“Agh. The gaseous smell: these are duds.”

Octavia was in good mood: she saw one of the white flowers. She picked it up and saw the next one. She followed the trace, picking the flowers, until she reached the entrance to a cave. She snug in: There was a figure standing with her back to her. She attacked the man. The grounder turned around and stopped the dagger aimed for his head.  
“I’m going to make a warrior out of you.”  
“Am I getting better?” under his chin was another dagger.  
Of course, Octavia didn’t need daggers. By now her aura could kill anything twenty centimeters from her skin. That made, what they were doing next dangerous: after some intimate kissing they had sex.  
Afterward they left the cave. The grounder gave her goodbye-kisses, when Finn showed up. The grounder went to attack him.  
“No! Lincoln, don’t kill him!”  
“I just knew, you understand English!” Finn grinned.  
“I’m here to talk. When we were looking for Octavia, you blew the horn and saved us. I have to believe, that there are more, who think like you.”  
“I stabbed you!”  
“And you got tortured, because of me! If we can get along, there could be peace.”  
“I don’t have the authority, to call a truce.”  
“Then get someone, who does.”  
“Okay, you get your leader and I get mine.”  
“What? My brother would never...”  
“Not your brother.”  
“Clarke.”

Clarke was playing a drinking game, when Finn came back. He pulled her away from the festivities.  
“Clarke, the grounders want to talk to you.”  
“What did you do?”  
“I talked to a guy.”  
“Okay, I’ll just get my pack and try to sober up a little. We meet at the gate in ten minutes.”  
As soon as Finn turned away, she went to Bellamy. “I’m going to negotiate a truce with the grounders.”  
“Sounds like a trap.”  
“That’s why I’m telling you to take Schwartz and some of your men and follow me, to cover me.  
And Bellamy? Bring guns.”  
“What about Finn, is he okay with us coming?”  
“He doesn’t need to know.”  
Bellamy got Schwartz. He refused to come, without bringing Noise. Then he searched for Jasper. He had mixed something, that covered their scent, so they needed his help to follow Finn unnoticed.  
He found him in Ravens tent, helping her with the bullets. “We need his help, your boyfriend is about to do something stupid.”  
“I’m coming with you, I just go and get Clarke.... She’s with him, right?”

When Clarke and Finn came to the bridge, where Octavia awaited them, it was broad daylight.  
Clarke had left some crumbs on the floor every now and then, to ensure, that the back-up was following them.  
After some time, the grounder, they had captured, appeared on the other side of the bridge. He came to them and hugged Octavia. “So that’s how the meeting got arranged.”, Clarke deadpanned.  
“They said, they’d be here now.”, Lincoln said.  
Right on the cue they heard something coming from the other side of the bridge.  
Out of the forest came three horses. The one in the middle was empty and followed the other two, both ridden by bulky men with swords. They stopped at their end of the bridge, as if they were waiting.  
“You said 'No weapons'.” Finn hissed to Lincoln.  
“They said, they wouldn’t bring any.”  
For a while nothing happened. It was obvious, that it had something to do, with the empty horse, so Clarke looked around. Then she found something: not to far, from the middle of the bridge, were some straps of gray-brown fabric, barely noticeable. Looking closely, they were revealed to be the clothes of tall woman, whose skin-color perfectly imitated the stones on the bridge. The woman was sparsely clothed, probably because she her clothes didn’t changed color as her skin seemed to, and lying on the ground.  
Clarke took of her jacket and walked towards her. When she made the first steps, the women opened her eyes and got up. She walked to the empty horse, her skin matching her surrounding all the time, and retrieved a set of clothing from the saddle. When she was fully clothed, she turned towards Clarke, and began striding to the middle of the bridge, to meet Clarke.  
After she and Clarke had made a few steps, they stood face to face.  
“You are the one, they call Clarke.”  
“Yes.” She held out her hand.  
The other woman showed no intention in taking it. Clarke thought, that she might know about her mutation, since the grounder obviously knew about those. She pulled her hand back.  
“I am Anya. You seemed to be confused by my gift.”  
“I am confused, that someone would risk her health, to show of her mutation and listen to passerbys.”   
“Says the girl, who wastes training-effort on her looks.” It took Clarke a few seconds, until she realized, what Anya was talking about: since landing her figure had gotten better. The reason was the ark-health-routine. Every citizen of the ark had to do daily or at least weekly training, to ensure that their body would survive rapid acceleration. For Clarke that meant: every morning, before breakfast, she absolved her one hour routine, that had strong similarities to a yoga-class. She started, with some sun-greetings, than she took two chairs, or whatever she could get, placed her head on one and her feet on the other one. Basically, planking. One minute on each side (face-down and face-up) were so easy on the ark, that she tended to put some weight on her body-center. At the end she made some coordination-training and then she finished with some shaking, to relax her muscles again. Depending on the jobs, the training was different: while Raven’s mechanic-training was extremely similar to her surgeon-training, Bellamy’s guard-training had no coordination-exercises, consisted mainly of strength and upper-body-training, and was two times as long.  
While the function of the training on the ark had been, to ensure health and keep everybody functioning, it was the main reason, they were able to survive earth-gravity. Now on the ground, many of the delinquents had kept up their training out of sheer routine. The gravity and the much more nutritious food (mainly meat) had lead to muscle-growth. Clarke’ arms and legs were not thin anymore; her tummy was not flat, because of the lack of fat, but because she had abs, even if not well toned. When on the ark, she had been about average, compared to the records from before the war, she was now hot.  
Thinking about it, she noticed the differences on the others as well. Especially Octavia was prominent, because she seemed to do similar training to Bellamy, probably, because he showed her.

What she said was:“That’s the training we did for years, to survive in the sky. But now we are here, and we have to live with you. I want that to be in peace.”  
“So you realized, you started a war, you can’t win.”  
Clarke locked at Anya: Even though, she had held the promise, she had given Lincoln, and wasn’t carrying a weapon, Clarke could see, it was rather obvious, that she did not come to make peace. Clarke had never liked to give up anyway.  
“We didn’t start anything, we were attacked first.”  
Anya seemed to have expected this line:”You sent an armed raiding-party to kidnap one of our people, you burned down a village with your missile killing nine. Those are acts of war! You are trespassers on our land. Why should I even talk to you?”  
“That thing, that burned down this village, was not meant to come down. It was a flare, meant to signal our parents, that we are still alive. Before one of us got speared, we didn’t even know, that humans could survive on the ground.  
But our parents are following us down. They will bring the guards. Soldiers, that had been trained, to kill everybody, who threatens our survival. If they come here, to find us fighting with you, or killed at your hands, they would wipe you out.”  
“They wouldn’t be the first ones to try.”  
At that point the negotiations went from bad to shit: Jasper could be heard screaming, than there were gunshots and an archer, who had been hiding in the trees, fell to the ground. The last thing Clarke became aware of, before everything turned black, and “Paint it black” was sounding from everywhere, was that Anya grabbed for something in her jacket.

Anya was not sure, if the sky-girl had just tried to warn her, when on the other side of the bridge a boy with maunon-weapon came out of the bushes and started shooting at her archers. The next thing she heard was loud music and a singer, announcing, that his world was black. Fittingly hers turned black to. A gifted sky-person had blinded her. She had grabbed her dagger and lashed at Clarke, but she must have dropped to the ground, because she missed. She turned her face skyward, and found out, that she had not been turned blind: she could see the sun as a small white circle, that shone about as much as the moon on a misty night. Without sound to keep any form of orientation, she was forced, to go down on her hands and knees, move around like an infant and hope, that her remaining archers wouldn’t be so stupid, to try and hit anything in this blackness.  
When she could see again, she felt shamed. Only one of her archers was still alive, her horse had run away, and on the bridge Lincoln was running with the sky-people. The archer confirmed, what she had already thought: After the first shoots had been fired, the bridge and it’s surroundings had been clouded in an absolute darkness, that had made it impossible to even aim at the bridge from above.

Back at the dropship, Jasper was celebrated like a hero. Now he was always surrounded by girls, begging him, to tell the story, how he had shot the grounders and saved Clarke’s live.  
When she was on the bridge, it reminded him of the river by Mt. Weather. He remembered, that the spear had come from the trees, so he stared at the treetops on the other side of the river. When he saw movement, he used his scope: in the treetops were archers, clearly aiming for Clarke on the bridge. He told the rest of the back-up, but other than Noise, playing some guitar-tunes quietly, they did nothing. So he stormed forward, shouted for those on the bridge, to take cover, and shot at the archers. When the first one hit the ground, Schwartz and Noise created the best possible distraction: while Noise made impossible for the grounders, to give orders or listen for any sounds they might make, Schwartz got on the bridge and escorted first Clarke, than Finn and Octavia from the bridge. Jasper could see the black shapes moving against the sky. The grounder, that had hugged Octavia earlier, followed them. It was pretty clear, that the other grounders wouldn’t treat him as one of them now. The moment they reached their end of the bridge, Schwartz lifted his veil and they ran. The delinquents were used to him using his ability and had kept their eyes closed, while they were affected, and thus were not blinded by the sudden light and ran back to the dropship.

Not everybody was happy, about what had happened on the bridge: Clarke and Bellamy were worried about the grounders retribution, since they had shot first, it could be considered as an attack on peaceful negotiations. Finn was furious. Not only did the peace-negotiations fail, but Clarke had brought guns there and was now arguing, that the guns had just saved them.  
When the night came, the mood turned really bad. They saw the dropship. It should have launched half a day later. The sight of the object, that promised help against the grounders, more supplies and tools and the sight of some of their parents was clearly visible against the night-sky. It did not slow down, like their own dropship or Raven’s pod had. Everybody saw it smashing into a hill in a fiery blast.


	12. The dove returned and Noah makes land

The radio still wasn’t working, so the next morning, they set out to salvage the wreck and hopefully find something, that explained, why a dropship, filled with trained personal, failed at a maneuver that a bunch of criminals and mechanic in a self-made capsule had absolved with ease.  
The wreckage was in a huge crater and was made up mainly of burned debris. From one of the larger parts, a retrorocket, from the looks of it, a liquid was leaking. Clarke showed it to Raven.  
“Try to keep it in with your ability, that’s liquid hydrazine. Highly unstable.”  
To proof her point, she took a patch of fabric, dipped it in the liquid and threw it into one of the still burning fires shouting “Fire in the hole!”.  
As soon as it came in contact with the flames, it exploded. The fireball was so big, that it nearly extinguished the surrounding fires.  
“I get a safe container.”  
They found a black-box. Monty and Raven got to work, to read the data. After a few seconds, they got Clarke and Bellamy into the tent. They turned their construction on. It made a sound, like someone unplugged an audio-chord, while the system was still running. But the sound was not a short disruption, like she had heard it on the ark, but a long lasting tone.  
“What am I listening to?”  
“This is, what was on the black-box.”  
“It was broken?”  
“Considering the circumstance, that it just fell from space, it’s in excellent condition.”, Raven deadpanned. “This is, what was running through every system of the dropship.”  
“It’s a jam-signal.”, Monty clarified. “My guess is, that who ever didn’t want the dropship to land properly is also the reason, that we lost contact to the ark. Someone, either on the ark or here on the ground, is blocking everything. Considering, the grounder’s technology, the first one has the higher probability. Any idea why?”  
“The Exodus-Program! There are not enough dropships on the ark, only enough for about 700. My guess is, that it got public, and now there’s some kind of civil war going on on the ark. That would explain, why the dropship started early.”  
“That means, your mum might not have been on this one.”  
Besides the black-box, they were able to salvage some tools and material to fortify the wall and the buildings around their dropship, as well as some metal, as crafting-material for weapons and Raven’s constructions.  
Raven had started, to half the amount of gunpowder in the bullets, to double the shots, that could be fired and Jasper tried to make gunpowder, but sulfur, one of the main-ingredients, was hard to come by.

Clarke’s assumption was close to the truth. The Unity-Day on the ark had been filled with happiness. Marcus Kane had most likely the worst mood on the ark: The guilt of ordering 320 deaths, because he had not dared to hope, still burdened him. He was now talking with his mother Vera, more or less the religious leader of the ark.  
“I heard, you would be on the first dropship?”  
“Yes, as leader of the guards, and member of the council, I was given nearly as much priority as Dr. Griffin.” He smiled.  
“Can you take the Eden-Tree down with you?”  
Marcus laughed a little: “We are very limited on what we can bring.”  
“Would you at least come and say the traveler’s blessing?”  
“I don’t remember it.” Marcus wanted the conversation to end.  
Jaha’s speech carried the good mood of the people. He confirmed, that their kids on the ground were still alive, and that they would follow them down and live on the ground with them, before the end of the year.  
“And now, the reason you all came here: the pageant!”  
With that he left the stage to the kids, which played the history of the ark.  
During his speech Diana Sydney, Abby Griffin’s replacement in the council, was talking to her predecessor.  
“Are you angry, that I took your seat in the council?”  
“Right now, I’m just happy, that I will see my daughter again.”  
“He cut his speech.” Diana sounded surprised, almost shocked.  
“Huh?”  
“I helped him write it. He left out the best part.” With that, she was gone.  
Twelve kids with flags paraded around a girl in the middle, acting as a narrator: “When the old world burned twelve space-stations drifted around earth all alone.  
Then ISS said to Shengzen 'Hey, let’s be together!' and they lived much better, than alone. So the other”   
An explosion destroyed the area around the stage.  
Kane didn’t need to be a doctor, to see, that everybody that had been on the stage, was dead. When he found his mother, he was fighting back his tears.  
He recited the traveler’s blessing, not sure, if Vera Kane was still alive to hear it. When he looked back up, he saw surprisingly little chaos. Dr. Griffin and her right hand Jackson were already patching up those, that could still be saved.  
“Who bombs a group of children?” Kane’s sorrow turned to fury.  
“Diana Sydney noted, that Jaha cut his speech short, than vanished. Jaha, Sydney and you are the only remaining council-members. The others were to close to the stage with the kids.”  
“We better find her then.”, Kane answered. He spoke into his radio:” Put the ark on lock-up. Try to find council-member Diana Sydney!”  
A few minutes later, when they were making sure, that the dropship wouldn’t miss it’s launch-window, he received news, that the bomber had turned himself in, so he went to interrogate him.  
A little later a mob showed up and chased the personnel out. With the mob was Diana Sydney. Abby Griffin hid. The mob closed the door and made preparations, to launch the ship right away, even though it was still connected to the ark with various systems.  
When they found Dr. Griffin they decided, to keep her, for her know-how. On the other side of the door some guards lead by Jaha tried to pry the door open, to prevent the start.  
Abby managed to get to the door control.  
The guards held the door open.  
Abby climbed through the half-closed door back into the ark.  
Then one of the guards made the decision to prioritize his life above that of all the ark’s residents.  
He climbed into the ship, kicking the tool from the door on his way.  
Jaha Abby and the guards fled through the other of the airlock.  
It was impossible to tell, what happened first. The door shut pretty much at the same time as the ship ripped itself from the ark.  
For a few seconds the whole ark was without energy. Somehow Sinclair must have managed, to get the systems running again; some lights went back on, from some air-ducts came air.  
The ark had been crippled beyond repair. Those that had survived would suffocate in one week, so Jaha decided to lift all preservation- measurements.  
Jaha had given up on saving anybody, opened his locker and got an old bottle of whiskey, to drink while watching records of his son.  
Jaha’s idea was insane, but the best they had.   
Not much later everybody had strapped him/herself to the floor. Than Sinclair delivered bad news: someone would have to be left behind.  
Kane stood up.  
To sacrifice himself for the survival of everybody he knew, would help him cope, with the 320 that had already sacrificed themselves.  
Than a rumble forced him, to sit back down.  
Jaha sent them off via radio.  
He would be alone on the main-ring of the ark for about two weeks, until the carbon-dioxide and the lack of oxygen would kill him, while the rest of the ark would try to land space-stations on the surface of the earth.


	13. End of Act II

Octavia was standing at the wall and saw one of Lincoln’s white flowers. Before she could sneak out, the guards started shouting; they had heard someone.  
Shots were fired. A shadow fell behind a tree and a grunt was heard.  
Octavia stormed out, sword in hand.  
She found Murphy. She ordered two guys, to carry him into the dropship.  
“He had been tortured.”, Clarke said, examining Murphy’s numerous wounds.  
“His ability is an accelerated self-healing, we should be able to talk to him, in an hour. His mutation doesn’t make him immortal, so leave him be, until he regains consciousness.” Clarke explained.  
True to her prognosis, Murphy woke up a little more than one hour later.  
“What are you doing here?” Bellamy was angry.  
“It’s not like I chose to come here. The grounders caught me, a few weeks after you banished me. They tortured me and asked me all kinds of shit about you guys.”  
“What did you tell them?”  
“Everything. And now don’t pretend, that you would have acted any different.”  
His person was not the biggest problem, that had come with Murphy: a few minutes after he regained consciousness one of the guards started bleeding from his eyes.  
“Murphy did that to, when he was unconscious. It will be over in a few hours, but I bet it’s highly infectious. Everybody who had contact with him or Murphy goes back to the dropship and stays there, until it’s over.”  
“What is it?”, Bellamy asked.  
“Biological warfare.”  
The quarantine came to late. They had sent Octavia to Lincoln, to ask him for a treatment or a cure, when Clarke threw up blood. When she lost consciousness for a few seconds, Finn caught her.

Octavia came back with bad news:” There is no cure. Some are immune and once you recovered it’s harmless, but all we can do, is giving the sick enough water. They sent the sickness not to kill, but to weaken us when they attack by first daylight.”  
“Murphy, do you know, where their camp is?”  
“No, when my cage was open, I just ran aimlessly. I came over a bridge, before I could see the dropship.”  
“So their camp is on the other side of the river! If we destroy that bridge, it will slow them down.” Finn was relieved, that there was at least a plan.  
“That bridge survived a nuclear war and 300 years without repairs.” Bellamy doubted.  
“It won’t survived me!”, Raven declared. She opened a locker and took out a big container. She filled its content into a glass-cylinder. It was hydrazine. Then got a big can and some of the remaining gunpowder.  
“Put the glass in the can, then the gunpowder. The gunpowder will function as an activator.” She marked the lower half of the can with an X. “When you go to the middle of the bridge and look down at the left side, you should see some outward-bent wire poking out of a hole in the concrete. Place it as deep in the hole as possible. When a bullet hits the mark, it should ignite the gunpowder. The gunpowder ignites the hydrazine, the hydrazine sends the bridge flying.”  
“Okay who carries the bomb.”  
“I take it.”, Finn said.  
“You hesitated.”, Raven noted.  
“It’s a bomb, it’s dangerous.”  
“Okay, I get a shooter and a gun and meet you at the gate.”, Bellamy finished the conversation.  
“Tell Clarke, what were doing.” Raven said to Finn.

Even though, she could barely stand, Clarke was helping around in the dropship, along with Octavia and the recovered Murphy. She didn’t like the idea of blowing up a bridge, when someone tried to cross it, but sans alternatives, she accepted it.

Bellamy’s nose started to bleed, when he found Jasper. “I need you, to help Finn blow up the bridge.”  
“How?”  
“Raven built a bomb. You hit the mark, you save us all.”  
“Why me? You have better sharpshooters.” Before Bellamy said something Jasper answered himself:” I’m the best, who’s left.”  
“Yes”  
“I’ll do it.”  
“Okay. Meet Finn at the gate.”

At the gate, Finn realized, that Raven had already gone with the bomb. They followed her.  
She was bleeding so they should catch up to her, before she could try to light the bomb.  
Jasper had gone into position to shoot, the bomb was already planted, but Raven was lying on the bridge unconscious. Finn ran to her to get her. To save him, Jasper shot at the grounders.  
The grounders retreated to their side of the bridge, which gave Finn the time to evacuate the bridge.  
Jasper aimed for the bomb and missed, now his gun was empty. The grounders seemed to notice, that there was nothing coming from Jasper anymore and started marching again.  
Monty had followed Jasper and now gave him another rifle.  
“You shouldn’t go out without me! You have three shots.”  
The first was another miss, but made the grounders, who had almost reached the middle of the bridge, stop and duck. The second hit the can to high. The grounders started to run, to take out the shooter as fast as possible.  
When the last bullet hit the can, the bridge was filled with grounders, some had already crossed it.  
The detonation literally sent the bridge flying; the walkway on top of the bridge rained it in pieces down on those, that had been to close.  
Jasper, Monty, Finn and Raven went back.  
“Why did you take the bomb?”  
“When you caught Clarke, you didn’t hesitate for a second. You knew, you could get sick, but you did it without thinking. But when asked to take my bomb, you hesitated. Finn, I want to be loved, the way you love Clarke.”  
With that, it was over. Neither of them argued about it.  
Clarke could see the explosion of the bridge from the entrance of the dropship. She spoke out, what went through her head: “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” When asked about the first successful nuclear test, Oppenheimer had cited this part of the a Hindu philosophic book.  
Bellamy stared at her, so she tried to explain: “The inventor of the nuclear bomb, said”  
“I know about Oppenheimer.” Bellamy interrupted her.  
Jasper’s, Monty’s, Finn’s and Raven’s return was not very happy. Their high losses at the bridge might have scared the grounders of, but nobody actually believed that, and Lincoln urged Octavia, to leave with him, fearing someone, he called Mountain-men.  
Four people were dead, when most of the sickness was over, one of the dead, was the guy, who had tied the slip-knot for Murphy, which lifted the latter’s mood. Since he had been a great help in the sick-bay the last eight hours, the delinquents decided to not throw him out again, but didn’t give him a weapon either.  
Right now he was in a hut with Octavia, smoking meat, to make it last winter.  
Then one of his many enemies came in, to mock him. When Murphy told him condescendingly, that the fires needed to be kept small, to produce enough smoke and keep the wooden hut from burning, he layed some more wood on the fire.  
Clarke and Bellamy ran out of the dropship, to find the smoking-hut burning.  
Octavia stood in front of it holding a boy with an arm twisted painfully behind his back.  
“What’s going on?”, Bellamy asked, while he watched the others trying to put out the fire.  
“This idiot put to much wood on the smoking-fires, mainly because Murphy told him not to.”, was Octavia’s answer.  
“In there was almost all our meat, if the grounders don’t kill us, we will starve.”, Clarke deadpanned, by now she had become used to news like this.  
“Okay, we have to go hunting again. Take spears and knifes, we need the guns, when the grounders attack. Raven’s mines won’t be enough, when they come for us.”  
After the negotiations, Raven had turned every piece of wire in the camp into a short-distance radios, that were not affected, by whatever blocked them from the ark.  
After the bridge had been destroyed, she had built mines from cans, stones and gunpowder.  
Finn wanted to go with Clarke, she tried to refuse, but accepted when another boy wanted to be part of their party.  
They left the camp and wandered for a few minutes, when Finn stopped and pointed at something on the ground. There was a boar footprint, clearly visible. Clark could tell, it was rather fresh. She looked at Finn. “It smells so strong like boar, I can barely tell, where it is now.”, he pointed in the direction, the footprint pointed as well, but didn’t move. “What’s wrong?”  
“The trace...”  
“It’s to perfect.”, Clarke realized. The footprint looked like a picture from earth-skills.  
“What are you talking about?”, the boy asked nervously. His mutation would keep him save, most likely, but he didn’t want to find his limits.  
“We are being hunted.” A spear hit the boy in the stomach, Clarke and Finn tried to run, but were ambushed by grounders dressed in boar-pelts.  
The grounders left the boy for dead and carried Clarke and Finn away. The boy threw up. Like Dr. Griffin’s scalpel, the spear had not been able to penetrate his skin. When he had got his implant, he had to take suppressant-pills beforehand. He got the radio and warned the others.  
Monty said, he would try to find Clarke. A few seconds later he could be heard saying:”That’s impossible, guys...” then nobody was able to find or even reach him.

Clarke woke up next to Finn in a room. In front of her stood Anya. “When you destroyed the bridge, you killed 60 warriors and injured dozens.”  
“Why did you take us here? Why not just kill us?”  
“Our healer is gone, but the injured still need help.” She stepped aside. Behind her on the table lay a girl, not older than thirteen. Clarke looked shocked.  
“What happened to her?”  
“She had just crossed the bridge, when you destroyed it.”  
“She’s a little girl, why was she even there?”  
“Tris is my second, she lead the army from the front. But that is not important right now. Right now I want you to save her. When she dies, he dies.”  
Clarke ran to the girl and examined her, by running her fingers first over her arm, than, when she noticed, that the girl couldn’t breath, over her back.  
“Her right lung is filled with liquid. It’s under pressure so she can neither breath in properly nor spit out the liquid”  
“How? They would have noticed, if she had been in the water for to long, and she doesn’t have any wounds.”  
“It was the pressure of the explosion. She’s suffocating on her own blood!”, she turned to the guards:” I need a small blade and a tube, about the size of my finger.”  
When the guards didn’t move immediately, she shouted at them:” NOW!”  
The guards brought her what she needed. To Anya’s and the guard’s shock, she put the knife into Tris’ lower right chest, and then plunged the tube into the resulting wound. When one of the guards approached her, she threatened him, with the blade. As blood started to trickle out of the tube, Clarke appeared to be relieved. “It’s working!”  
A little later Anya could hear her seconds breathing stabilizing.  
When the blood stopped flowing, Clarke pulled out the tube and stitched the wound.

“What will happen now?”, Clarke asked Anya.  
“If she lives, you two will come with us. Especially you are very capable.”  
“And what about my people?”  
“In two days they will all be dead. After the negotiations, the Commander deemed you to dangerous, to keep you alive.” There was no point arguing.  
Anya caressed Tris’ forehead.  
“She’s hot.”  
Clarke looked alarmed and stormed towards her.  
Her ability was little help.  
“She’s fevering. It’s a blood-poisoning.”  
“What does that mean”, Finn asked.  
“Her blood is septic.”  
“What do you need?”, Anya asked.  
“Penicillin! She’s beyond the point, where seaweed could help her.”  
“They don’t have that kind of medication, Clarke. There must be another way to clean her blood.”  
“Blood! A blood-transfusion could lessen it enough, that seaweed could work. I need a donor!”, She said into the room. When nobody moved, most of them not even understanding, what she wanted, Finn stepped forward.  
“I need a hollow needle, the biggest you can find.”  
While the guards were searching for the item, she paced around restlessly, against a poisoning her ability was useless.  
She was given an instrument, that would do the job. She grabbed Finn’s arm and just wanted to stick the needle into his artery, when he stopped her: “It’s over.”  
Tris’ heart had stopped beating, before she had been given the needle.  
She tried, to force the heart, to start again, but to no avail; the girl was dead.  
Anya looked for a few seconds, then she motioned to Finn and a guard took him.  
“She dies, he dies.” She cut a strand of Tris’ hair and pocketed it.  
Clarke was left alone with a single guard.  
She was not going to let them kill her friends.  
“What were those marks on her back?”  
When examining Tris, she had noticed some kind of scars on her shoulder, each one a little dot.  
“One for every kill in battle.”  
“Eleven! She’s a little girl!”  
“She was very brave!”  
“How many marks do you have?”  
He took of his armor to show of his kill-marks.  
“Most of them, I got after the ice-nation...”  
He was cut short, when Clarke’s fingers made contact to his skin.  
Without control over his nervous-system he fell to his knees, without making a sound.  
Clarke’s other hand touched his head and he was dead. Clarke didn’t feel bad about using her abilities, to kill the guard; all the guards and Anya had been wearing thick armor, including gloves, that covered everything she could have reached. Likely Murphy had told them about her abilities.  
She left the building and ran.  
In the darkness, she couldn’t really tell, where she was going.  
She noticed the trip-wire the moment, her foot touched it. It was to late. She tried to brace herself, as a rope around her foot pulled her rapidly upwards. She tried to free herself, but without a blade or at least a sharp edge to cut the rope, it was useless.  
Her hands were tied, and she was brought back to the grounder-camp. Anya sat at a campfire. She looked disappointed. “You could not have saved your friends anyway, but now you can’t be saved either. Even if you couldn’t save Tris, you are a dedicated and skilled healer. You would have been a great asset to my troops.”  
A man approached her from behind: “I came here without running into any of your guards, Anya. No wonder, you have a hard time against sky-kru!”  
“My archers are in the trees and would kill every enemy that approaches the camp. You are not an enemy, are you, Tristan?” Anya’s voice was cold. “What are you doing here anyway?”  
“The Commander thinks, you can’t handle these kids, so the Commander sent me, with a hundred of my warriors.”  
“I already have 250 fighting for me, I don’t need your back-up!”  
“You misunderstood me. The Commander placed me in charge! You and your warriors will listen to me now.”  
Anya didn’t look, like she wanted to accept that, but then they could see a fire. It was a beacon, because Tristan and most of the warriors headed inside. Anya pointed at one of the masked men and gave a last order: “Kill her, then follow us!”  
When the two were alone, Clarke tried to struggle, until she saw the men’s eyes. It was Lincoln.  
He took her to the fire. Finn was waiting there.  
“Why do you keep on helping us?”, they asked, as he lead them into a cave.  
“Because I think, it’s the right thing to do. When you reach your camp, try to get to Luna. You have to be gone, before the scouts arrive.” he gave them his book. “She might help you. Now be quiet, I don’t want to run into reapers.”  
They followed him silently for a few minutes, when they saw the shine of a fire in front of them in the tunnel.  
“Okay, hide here. I will distract them. When they follow me, you follow the right tunnel. Don’t stop for any reason, until you are back on the surface again.”  
Before they could object, Lincoln ran forward and started to shout, so they crept into the shadows.  
Lincoln ran through the tunnels, followed by a horde of men. They looked wild, even compared to the grounder warriors.  
When they had passed Clarke and Finn, without noticing them, the two followed the tunnel.  
They reached the campfire, and understood, why Lincoln had not wanted, to meet the reapers: Around the fire lay human body-parts. The bites left no doubt, what the reapers had done with them.  
They fled the scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Chapter-titel refers to theater, where the second act is usually the longest and sets the stage for the big climax, that is the third and last act.  
> As such it mostly ends as open as it can, when the actors that are still on stage have to hold still while the curtain closes.


	14. Stand your ground

The delinquents’ camp was in disarray, when they came there.  
Raven told them, what had happened:  
Murphy had been murdering those, that had tried to hang him, for Wells’ murder. Jasper had caught him in the act, so he had taken him hostage inside the dropship. Since the gunpowder-reserves were in there they had to open it again. Bellamy distracted him, while Raven crawled underneath the ship’s floor, to open the door.  
Bellamy had exchanged himself for Jasper and Murphy was about to hang him, when he heard her.  
He shot blindly at the floor, allowing Bellamy, to free himself and open the door. Murphy had hit Raven in the back. He fled to the second floor, where the gunpowder was. Before they could get to him, he had used it, to blow away a panel and fled through the resulting hole.  
Bellamy was now rallying the delinquents, to defend the camp.  
When Clarke told them, to run, they immediately changed their mind.  
Clarke looked at Raven’s wound. She used her ability, to make her lie still.  
“You will not walk anywhere. You have a bullet in your spine! Even if you don’t have internal bleeding due to some miracle, any wrong movement could cause it to sewer the nerves in your spine and paralyze you for ever. If the wound is to old, not even my mother’s ability can do anything about that. You have to wait, until there is enough peace for me, to take the bullet out!”  
They put her on a stretcher and left the camp.  
The convoy of the remaining 89 got on their way, led by Octavia, reading Lincoln’s map.  
“Eleven dead.”, Bellamy said.  
“89 still alive! Because of you, they are still alive. That’s why we still need you.”  
“They follow you right now.”  
“It was an easy choice, to either die in a battle, they could not win, or run to safety, but a few minutes ago, they were ready to give their lives at your command! You are a good leader.”

The hadn’t come far, when Octavia stopped. “Grounders?”  
The answer came in form of a thrown blade, that killed the guy next to Octavia.  
Schwartz reacted right away and clouded the convoy in darkness, as they fled back behind the walls of their camp.  
They closed the doors. And positioned shooters on the walls.  
“Okay, we’re to late, the army is here already. So what does our defensive situation look like?”  
“The grounders have gotten back-up. I heard Anya talking to the other leader. They have about 350 warriors.”  
“Okay, we have 25 guns with 20 bullets each and some grenades. That’s 500 dead grounders in theory. Most of the valley is mined, thanks to Raven.”  
“Not everything. Thank you, Murphy.” Raven was bitter.  
“At least, he didn’t blew up the fuel-line or the grounders wouldn’t have anything to do.”  
“Do you mean, there’s still rocket-fuel in the dropship?”  
“Yes, you must have had a pretty rough landing.”  
“Enough for a bomb?”  
“Enough for a hundred bombs, but we don’t have gunpowder left, as activator; again: Thank you, Murphy. Besides, we would be in the detonation-radius.”  
“I don’t want to blow the ship up. I want it to take of.”  
“The grounders storm the walls, we close the doors of the ship, ignite the retrorockets, a ring of fire turns everything into ash. It should work, but we need some time to work on the rockets, they are not meant to be started after the landing.”  
“Schwartz and Noise should be able, to defend the valley for a while. We dug trenches as covers for the shooters, connected through tunnels. From now on the gates stay closed and nobody except the shooters leaves the camp.”  
Clarke had to admire Bellamy’s productivity. She went with Raven inside the dropship and had to stop her from trying, to crawl beneath the floor. She had worked her way through the cables for a few minutes, when she heard the first gunshots.  
Then she heard Jasper say on the radio: “Stop shooting at them, as long as they are just running around. They want us to waste ammo.”  
With a bang, the grounders found out, that Schwartz was standing in a minefield. His ability to see through his darkness, combined with Noise covering every sound with loud shouts, animal noises, and horn-sounds, made the valley nearly impassable.  
Clarke had finally found the cable, Raven had described her. It was ruined. “I find the one thing, you’re bad at, and then it has to be, when my life depends on it.”  
“Jasper! He can fix a cable.”  
She ran to get Jasper and left Raven with Finn. Clarke came back with Jasper and he got working on the cables. “It’s not rocket-science!”  
“Raven this literally is rocket-science!”  
“Electricity flows to the electromagnet, opens the fuel-line, flows to the ignition, starts the rockets.”  
She looked pale.  
More quietly, so Jasper wouldn’t hear her she said: “Clarke, I can’t feel my legs!”  
Clarke found the cause immediately: “Raven, you have internal bleeding. The blood is threatening your nervous-system so it’s down. I’ll do what I can, to keep you alive, until I can remove the bullet, but you could die.” Raven was nobody, who needed sugarcoating.  
“If we could give her something, to stop the bleeding, would that help?”  
“Right now, I stop her blood from flowing to her lower body, but that can damage the tissue in her hips and legs, so yes, it would help. What’s your plan?”  
“Lincoln had these vials. Maybe he has more in his cave.”  
“Okay, go, but Finn? Be careful.”  
When Finn got out, the valley light up, Schwartz had retreated, without Noise.


	15. End of Part 1

The wall was now the last line of defense.  
“We are not ready yet, you have to hold the wall longer!”  
Jasper was making progress with the rockets, but he still needed time and Finn still wasn’t back.  
When she heard the reaper-cries, she first thought of Noise, but when the gunners reported, that the grounders were fighting other grounders, she knew, that Finn must have lead them here. He came out of the tunnel and gave her a vial.  
She gave Raven the medicine, when she the noise outside changed. The grounders were tearing down the gate.  
Bellamy’s gun was empty, when a grounder stood above him. Before the grounder could attack, a sword pocked out of his stomach. Octavia pulled her sword back and helped her brother up.  
They ran towards the tunnel, to get into the dropship, when a stray arrow hit her leg. Bellamy carried her behind a tree.  
“Go to the dropship!”  
“I’m not going to leave you here.”  
Lincoln saw them. “I take Octavia with me.”  
Bellamy didn’t exactly like the idea, of letting his sister alone with someone, he barely knew, but he knew, that Lincoln would keep Octavia safe.  
“Thank you.” They separated and ran into opposite directions.  
When he came out of the tunnel, he was meet by grounders. One of them attacked him. Before he could kill him, Finn launched himself at the grounder. The dropship was closing its door.  
Bellamy pulled Finn to his feet and ran to the tunnel, without looking back.

Anya was sitting with Tristan, listening to the device, they had taken from the sky-boy. It was the same one, they had caught to send the fever. He was tough, so he he had some deep cuts from Tristan.  
He had told them, that the defenders were low on ammo, so Tristan had ordered some of his men, to run from tree to tree, to make the enemy waste his bullets. The gifted Anya had encountered on the bridge was guarding the valley, that led towards their gate. When they started the actual attack, Tristan ignored her advise, to not let the warriors advance through the darkness. Her doubts were proven right a little later: with a loud noise one of the warriors flew out of the darkness and the a voice from the radio said: “The grounders found out about the minefield, they might avoid it now.”  
Tristan put his dagger in the leg of the prisoner. “That’s for not telling us about the minefield.”  
Than he stormed forward, to lead the attack. Anya followed him.  
Anya kept her guard up. Clarke had destroyed the bridge, killed her guard and then again had managed, to escape. Lincoln helped her without doubt, but she wouldn’t underestimate her, especially, when the voice on the radio had repeatedly told the gunners, that the were playing on time. The sky-girl definitely had a plan. When the darkness went away, and the reapers were beaten, it looked, like nothing could save the kids, when Anya saw something in the night-sky: Lights, similar to shooting-stars. She had seen three of those lights before. This time it were twelve.  
“They get back-up!”, she informed Tristan.  
“So let’s kill the kids, before we deal with the parents.” Tristan was sure, that the battle was won.  
Anya was still nervous. On the radio, they had said, that Clarke and Raven needed more time.  
Tristan fought the leader of the gunners, when she saw, that the door of their ship was closing. Clarke’s plan was surely not, to close another door, and hope for the best, when the fortress had a clearly visible hole. She shed some of her armor, leaped into the construction and tried to be unnoticed using her ability.  
The sky-people stared at her. She drew her sword and snarled at the kids, when Jasper pressed a button, and the dropship jumped. After a few seconds, the dropship had stopped moving and she was lying on the floor. The sky-kru were over her and started kicking her, until Clarke stopped them: “I don’t care what Bellamy or anyone says. We are not like that!”  
They tied her hands.  
They waited till daybreak, before they dared to open the door. The first thing Anya saw, was ash. The whole camp was gone. Some remnants of the wall still stood, covered in burned wood and corpses.  
Then came the red smoke.  
“Mountain-men.”  
Then she passed out, along with the kids.


	16. Aftermath

While 300 warriors were burned alive, Raven saw vision. Since they were both floating through space, she assumed, that she was still unconscious laying in the dropship.  
“Not only blood flows red. Slavery does and false salvation does to. And red is the color of love and of the anger after betrayal. With the end of death and monsters, the healer will become death. United again by the enemy, the betrayer will stain the ice red to save the betrayed and will be forgiven.  
But when blood flows black, the red enemy of mankind will rise, to save its victims for eternity.  
To fight, death will take, what belongs to the black blood.  
And again, after victory, the winner will give up.”  
Raven was sure, that she would only think about the prophecy, when it was already to late, like it had been the case before with the other delinquents.

Raven had regained consciousness after the dropship’s retrorockets had stopped firing. The delinquents had left the ship without her, taking Clarke and Anya with them.  
She heard noises from outside, that sounded, like they had been ambushed. A few minutes passed, during which Raven gritted her teeth and played dead. When the noises stopped, she robbed over to one of the last guns and grabbed it. She hid it beneath herself and played dead again, when she heard something.  
A grounder had come, to look at the sky-kru camp, to find it completely empty. On one side, outside the walls had been a pile of clothes. The next hunting-party from TonDC would probable find it and take it with them.  
Inside the walls, was nothing but ash. There were some traces on the ground. The Maunon must have taken the survivors and left their clothes here.  
The door of their fortress, the dropship, was open. On the floor was a girl, either dead or badly injured. She must have been unconscious, when the maunon had taken her friends.  
The girl turned over and fired a weapon at him.  
Raven stayed tense, because she still heard footsteps.  
Murphy came in. He looked at the dead grounder, then at Raven.  
“Go away, or you’re dead!”  
He looked at her, but didn’t move away.  
“That was the last one. He was supposed to watch over me, but he got curious, what happened to his friends. Idiot tied me up with my already broken hand.” Murphy showed his left hand, that was covered in blood.  
Raven pulled the trigger. A click; the gun was empty.  
“I would have pulled the trigger, too.”  
Raven tried to throw the gun at him, using her ability, but it made her wince.  
Murphy sat down, next to her. He had a fresh set of wounds. Obviously the grounders had caught and tortured him again.  
He grinned: “Still better than at home. By the way, I didn’t want to hit you.”, he gestured at her back. “I just wanted to kill Bellamy.”  
“Did mommy not love you, or why are you such an asshole?”  
“In fact mommy and daddy loved me. But then I got sick. Very sick. Daddy tried to steal medicine, that would not have helped me anyway. He got floated, and mommy? Mommy starts drinking. A lot. Then, one day, she I find her a puddle of her own puke and the last thing, she says to me is: 'You killed him!'.”  
“Buh-hu.”, Raven mocked. They stayed silent for a while.  
Murphy tried to get up again, because they heard footsteps and voices.

Bellamy was sure, that Finn had been right behind him, when the dropship had fired its rockets. He had been running for a while now. He found Monroe and Noise.  
Then he found Finn: the grounder, that had attacked him at the dropship had captured him and was dragging him behind his horse on a leash.  
“Okay, here’s the plan: I attack him and distract him, you free Finn. Then it’s four against one, he won’t stand a chance.”  
He got out of the bushes and shouted at the grounder. The grounder dashed towards Bellamy, still dragging Finn behind him. Bellamy threw his spear, but the experienced warrior just dodged grinning. He hit Bellamy, with the flat side of his ax.  
When he hit the ground, the warrior was already on his feet and put a rope around his hands, tying him to his horse as well.  
With the sound of a rocket taking off Monroe and Noise stormed forward. The grounder faced them.

Clarke woke up. She wore a hospital gown, the room, she was in, was small and held in light colors. She had an infusion in her right arm, which she pulled out slowly. She stood up.  
In front of her was a white door, with a small window and a food-lid on the bottom. Over the door was a camera. At the opposite end of the room was a curtain, that was held in place by rails, running along the ceiling and the floor. Clarke didn’t need to look behind the curtain, to know that there was a “bathroom”.  
This was an isolation-cell. She looked through the window in the door.  
At the other side of the corridor was a similar door. Through the window, she could see Monty!  
She tried to call out to him and he did as well, but it came through much to muffled for her to understand.  
Than she saw something, that was even more disturbing: next to Monty’s door was sign. It read: “Mount Weather: Quarantine-Yard”  
Clarke scheduled her routine, to pass the time, until she would be told, what was going on.  
When she woke up, she did her morning-sports. After the failed negotiations with Anya, she had changed her program to include push-ups, squats, and more cardio.  
Then she ate. The food was brought to her through the lid. She had read about dishware like these: They had mainly been used in prisons and psychological-yards, so the user couldn’t use them as a weapon or to commit suicide. Fork and spoon were not very hard and were directly linked to the plate. A knife was never part of the cutlery.  
After eating, she sat on the bed, and looked at Monty, through the door.  
Then she paced around her room and stretched herself.  
There was no clock, she showered and went to bed, when she felt like it.  
One day, Monty didn’t look back.  
Clarke stood up and walked to the door. Monty’s door was open. A person in a hazard-suit was in his room, putting laundry in a bag. Clarke hit the door, with her flat hand and shouted out: “Where is Monty!” the figure ignored her and continued to work.  
Time to get some answers.  
Clarke took the stand for her infusion, that they hadn’t gotten out of her room foolishly.  
She took it apart and used the bottom piece to first smash the camera and then the window.  
The cell were not made, to contain a violent person; the door grip could be used from the inside, when reaching through the window. Clarke slit her arm in the process, because she hadn’t bothered, to remove all the shards from the window.  
The door opened. Clarke used her power, to limit her bleeding. She picked up a big shard.  
She needed skin-contact to use her power at someone else, and when threatening someone, the shard would do a good job. She sneaked up to the person. She pulled away the hood. It was a girl, around her age, dark hair, earplugs, extremely pale. Clarke pulled out the plugs, music could be heard faintly, and held the shard to her throat. “Who are you?”  
“I’m Maya. Please, Clarke”  
“How do you know my name?” Clarke knew, that the girl was terrified, but if she had to threaten a scared girl, she would.  
“It says so in your papers. I don’t know, who filed them, but they must know from your friends.”  
“Where are they?”  
“In the hall”  
“Bring me to them!”  
She walked through some corridors, always keeping the shard at Maya’s throat and with at least one finger touching her. She wouldn’t use her power on the girl, unless necessary. They maybe didn’t know about mutations and she didn’t want to give away the moment of surprise.  
They reached an elevator, when Maya tried to reach into her suit. Clarke pushed her into the wall and grabbed her arm.  
“Key-card!” the girl nearly screamed. Clarke let go of her hand.  
With the card, the elevator-doors opened. “They should be on level five.”  
The elevator began to move down. “Clarke, I promise”  
“Shut up!”  
The doors opened, to reveal a mess-hall.  
Mt. Weather had been built in the cold war and therefor most of the furniture, decoration and supplies was still from this era, when the bombs fell. The hall was filled with people of various age, dressed nicely, dining, listening to music. Someone saw the newcomers and screamed: “Containment breach!”  
Then there were guards, pointing guns at her.

Lincoln had taken the arrow out of Octavia’s leg. He asked her again.  
“Ai laik Octavia kom sky-kru. I’m Octavia from the sky-people. Why do I have to learn that, when you speak English?”  
“It’s warrior-language – gonasleng. Most of us don’t understand that.”  
He continued to teach her trigedasleng.  
Suddenly they stopped walking. “We are close to my village. That white thing, you can see through the trees over there is the statue, I was named after.”  
“You were named after a statue.”  
“Not far from my village is a huge statue of a man, sitting on a thrown, with a sign saying: 'Lincoln'. At least one in every generation in TonDC is named Lincoln.”  
Octavia grinned, when she realized, that her boyfriend came from the remnants of the capital and was named after a famous president of the USA.  
Then came the fever. Lincoln had made a campfire. He examined her, then he licked the arrow, he had kept. He spit out immediately. “Poison.”  
He started running.  
“Wait, you can’t go to your village. They’ll kill you, you’re a traitor!”  
He stopped for a while.  
“The antidote is made from beetles, that life in the moss of the riverbanks. You will eat the beetles. It will work.” With that he ran to the river.  
Suddenly he heart Octavia scream. He hurried back. Octavia pointed to the treeline. “There was a monster.”  
“That’s the fever. You’re hallucinating.”, he assured her. They were close to a cave entrance, but Octavia’s gift should prevent the reapers from taking her.  
He still ran in haste.  
Octavia lost consciousness for a short time. When she opened her eyes again, a big grounder, with a dark, wild beard was standing in front of her.

Abby was the first person to leave Alpha-station. The earth was beautiful. They had landed not far from a lake. The landing had made a large clearing around the station. Just behind the station was a mountain. In the forest, she could see large amounts of smoke rising.  
“I think, I found the kids.” she reported inside to Kane and into the radio to everybody, that could listen.  
Kane lead a group to pick up the kids. Abby joined them, like most of the parents on Alpha-station, that had children among the 100.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote most of the stuff I posted years ago.  
> I began writing again, when I opened my account, but I begin to see why I stopped  
> Season two was a lot less "action" and more relationsship.  
> Season three will likely be better, because it allows for alot of worldbuilding


	17. Getting back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to correct me, if I get something objectively wrong (like logic, science, grammar or vocabulary).  
> I would love to know, what you think

They had walked for a few minutes, when they heard an earth-shattering noise.  
They ran that direction, to find a bulky, bald man, clad in leather armor, wielding an ax, attacking two teenagers. Kane wasted no time and shot him.  
Bellamy stood up. “I never thought, I’d bee happy, to meet you councilor Kane!”  
“Thank you. What happened.”  
“They attacked the dropship. Clarke, Raven and Jasper started the retrorockets. They probably got most of them; This one thought, he was the last one. He didn’t want to return empty-handed to his boss.”  
“Bring us to the dropship.”  
Finn and the other two kids locked bad, so they were escorted back to Alpha-station, to be treated by Jackson.  
The camp was gone. Outside the walls, lots of traces could be seen, but inside was a plain ash-field.  
The door to the dropship was open. Bellamy and Kane entered and stared at Murphy and Raven. Bellamy immediately pointed the gun, Kane had given him, at Murphy.  
He put on a face of annoyance as he held out his hands, like he was expecting to be cuffed.  
Bellamy started kicking him. Murphy fought back, as best as he could.  
“He didn’t do anything.”, Raven tried to stop Bellamy. Kane pulled them apart.  
“Do you know, where the others are?”  
“Someone must have ambushed and taken them away. Raven didn’t hear anything, and when I got here the camp already looked the same as now.”, Murphy said.  
Abby wrote at the wall of the dropship: “Clarke if you read this, go to our camp. Mum” beneath that, she drew a crude map, basically just a rectangle with two crosses and an arrow pointing from one to the other. Jake and Clarke always used to look at maps upside down, because from their apartment the south of the earth was on the upper side of the window, a grounder shouldn’t find the station with this map.  
They made their way back, carrying Raven on the stretcher, Abby had brought in foresight.  
In the sick-bay of Alpha-station she had bad news for the mechanic: “If I don’t remove the bullet, you will likely lose your legs for ever, but we have no anesthetic left, so without Clarke here to do that by hand, you will be fully awake. It will be extremely painful.”  
“Do it.” The doctor gave her a piece of wood covered with some fabric, to bite on, then turned her face-down on the table.

“I am Nyko, Lincoln said, you were poisoned. This should help.” The bearded man held out a vial.  
“Where is Lincoln?”  
“There were reapers. He lured them away, so I could help you. He said, that you are gifted and that I would die, if I came to close, when you’re unconscious, so I waited for ten minutes.”  
“Okay, you can come closer.” Octavia let the man treat her.  
“I will go back now. You stay here, until the pain is gone. By then Lincoln should be back. Reapers don’t use bows, so you should be fine.”  
He left Octavia with some food by the campfire.

Clarke was in a sick-bay. The second, the people had seen her, she had let the blood flow freely from the cut in her arm. The cut had been stitched and bandaged. Her hands were tied to the bed-posts, to prevent her from attacking anybody, even though she hadn’t resist her arrest.  
In the room came an elder man, around 60 years old.  
“Hello Ms. Griffin. I am Dante Wallace, the president of the United States of America. Well, all that is left.” he gestured the guards to open her restraints and held out his hand. She took it. For all she could tell, he was in a really good condition.  
“According to your friends, you saved them on multiple occasions. I have good news for you: you don’t have to fight anymore.”  
He gestured again. The nurse, Clarke had taken hostage, came in. She had a band-aid on her throat.  
“This is Maya. She has something to tell you.”  
“I understand your reaction, when you couldn’t see your friend,”, she began slowly, “But if you had just waited for two more days, you were scheduled”, her voice became more agitated.  
Mr. Wallace interrupted her with a stern look.  
“I won’t press charges against you.” It was obvious, that she had not made that decision entirely voluntary. In the shadow of her last half year, Clarke almost felt like laughing. She kept a serious look on her face.  
“Thank you, Maya. I’m sorry, after what I have gone through, I was just ticked out, when I lost sight of Monty.”  
She wouldn’t trust these people. Monty had been mid-sentence on his radio and now they wanted her to believe, that she was a valued guest.  
“Now go, get dressed and come to the door. It’s time for you, to be reunited with your friends.”  
At Mr. Wallace command a small wardrobe on wheels had been pushed into the room. On display were dresses, blouses and jewelry  
When the president, the nurse and the guards had left the room, she searched the wardrobe for simple clothes. She was happy to find thick jeans-pants, a sports-bra in her size, a tank-top and a plain button-shirt as well as high-heeled shoes. She didn’t wear them. She broke away one of the heels and hid it in her sleeves, then put the shoes back. If nobody took them out, nobody would notice.  
Instead she wore plain, flat leather-shoes.  
All in all her look was casual, not to pragmatic. Simply comfortable. She put on a relaxed face.  
At the door Mr. Wallace was waiting for her, smiling.  
“As you probably already thought, the residents of Mt. Weather are the descendants of the people, that fled here 300 years ago, when the bombs fell.”  
“You found yourself a good home, better than the ark.”  
“Yes, different than the ark, Mt. Weather had been built, to last eternally. But for us, this bunker is not only shelter, but also prison.”  
“How?”  
“When the bombs fell and only hours later the cleaners flew through the sky, they killed everybody, that couldn’t withstand the radiation; Effectively about 99% of earth’s population.”, the man started to explain.  
The cleaners were invented, to prevent a super-winter. After huge detonations, like a big volcano, a meteor-impact or, like it had been the case, a nuclear war, these device should dissolve ash-clouds. This prevented a temperature-drop, that could threaten all of earth’s life. But the cleaners had a problem: the ash, they would cause to immediately fall down, was highly radioactive. Different than the fallout of a nuclear bomb, the ash would keep on emitting electrons and protons for thousands of years, keeping the global radiation-levels above, what a normal humans should be able to withstand for hundreds of years, unless the ash would have been collected in one central location underground, where the atoms wouldn’t be spread over the whole earth.  
“The outsiders, as we call those you have been at war with, are the descendants of those, that survived on the surface. They can roam the surface freely, because their bodies are adapted, to the heightened level of radiation. Ours are not. But yours are even better.”  
“Cosmic radiation”, Clarke nodded. She had read, that in the first 60 years, a great deal, of the ark’s population had died of cancer, but since then, the ark had not had a single case of radiation related sicknesses in 240 years.  
Considering how few mutants had been among the grounders, in comparison to the delinquents, she had already assumed earth’s radiation-level to be lower, than the ark’s.  
He escorted her through a multitude of corridors, when a guard caught up to them, and whispered in his ear. He didn’t stop smiling, as he took out his card, to open the elevator.  
“Clarke, you are safe here. You don’t have to fight anymore. Now, please return that heel.”  
She handed it to him, wordlessly. Most of the guards were not to tall and some even wore short sleeves, she could use her power anyway.  
The door opened again, to reveal the mess-hall. There were the others. She saw right away, that it were not all of the delinquents: Those that had been outside of the walls, when she had closed the doors, were missing, as well as Raven. She would definitely ask about the first-ones, as well as she would talk about the other stations, since the mountain-men must already known about them.  
Right now they were given a tour through level five, the living-quarters of the mountain. None of them were given a key-card, meaning, they couldn’t leave this level. At the end of the tour, they were given maps of the mountain. Four maps in total, the maps showed no exits and only rooms in level five and four, where the sick-bay was located. As guests, they were of course allowed, to go there, whenever they felt the need to do so, they should just talk to one of the members of the medical staff, that were in one of the public areas of level five at all times, like every other citizen of Mt. Weather, too.  
They were assigned a big room filled with bunk-beds. Here she talked to her friends again. There were barely any members of Bellamy’s shooters left, there were Harper and Schwartz, who had retreated from the minefield, Jasper and Monty.  
She was sure, that Bellamy, Finn and Raven were still alive. Schwartz told her, that Noise had been hiding in a tree above him the whole time, so he was likely alive as well. If the mountain-men really had wanted to save them, then they must have found Raven.

They were invited to dinner. All the food consisted either of fish, algae or rice, grown inside the mountain’s hydro-cultures. Most of the food was loaded with food-coloring and artificial aromas.  
Since she wanted to play the relaxed girl, Clarke loaded her plate with fake-beef and then cake.  
That she acted relaxed, didn’t change, that her friends lack of wariness angered her.  
“Monty, when we last heard of you, you were on the radio. You wanted to tell us something, but were interrupted mid-sentence!”  
“I don’t remember anything, after I left the camp. I don’t know, what I saw. They found me unconscious and took me with them. They saved me, Clarke!”  
“How could they not have found Raven? Jasper, you stood right next to her, before we opened the door. She was alive, when they used the smoke-grenades. She had still been alive then. If Finn and the others found her, before Anya woke up, she still is!”  
“There are 46 of us. It’s a lot of work, to carry us here. Now, if you might excuse me, I get myself another helping of that chocolate-cake.” With that Jasper stood up and made his way to the buffet.  
The chocolate-cake was empty. Clarke watched him talk to the nurse, Maya, for a while. They seemed to get along fine. Her key-card was laying on the table.  
Clarke stood up and walked over, the map and the “Mt. Weather-guide” in her hands.  
“I just wanted to apologize, without President Wallace watching over your shoulder.”  
Maya didn’t look into Clarke’s eyes.  
“Okay.”  
“It’s just: One second I’m fighting for my life, then there are gas-grenades and I wake up in quarantine. When Monty was gone, I couldn’t wait, so I broke out. That doesn’t excuse, how I treated you, but it’s still hard for me to believe, that I can stop worrying.”  
This time Maya looked up.  
“I believe you. The staff wasn’t allowed, to enter your rooms. We were told, that President Wallace wanted to be the first one, to give you a welcome. But just, because I understand your motives, I won’t ignore what you did, like everybody else.”  
“Thanks for your honesty.” Clarke remembered to talk Maya, should she be much longer in Mt. Weather. She picked up her map and folder from the table and left.  
It wouldn’t take the nurse long to notice, that she had taken her key-card. She ran through the corridors, to the door, with the electrical lock. She used the card. Like she had guessed, there were stairs. She ran up the stairs, as far as possible. She heard an alarm. If she didn’t make it out, she had to come up with a good excuse.  
She reached the end of the stairs. The only door, not locked was marked as an emergency-exit. She had tried Maya’s card on one of the doors, but either, they had already blocked the card or she never had the permission to go through these doors in the first place.  
She stood in a steep long hallway. On the one end she could see the door of the elevator and a garage door. On the other side was a massive, round door. She noticed, that the door, she just ran through, had air-sealing. She stood in a giant airlock and was looking at the door out. She started running again. From another door came a single guard with a gun. His gun was pointing to the ground, so she ran straight into him, without slowing down. She knocked him down, took his gun and ran on aiming the gun at everybody, that tried to stop her. She was using the controls to open the door, when she heard Jasper.  
“Clarke stop it, you’ll kill them!”  
Maya was with him, panic in her eyes.  
“Just go behind one of the doors!”  
“You already unlocked the outer door, the inner doors stay sealed shut, until the outer door is locked again, or an evacuation-alarm overrides all the locks!”, Maya explained.  
Clarke had hesitated to long. A few of the guards had put on an environment-suits and were now pointing their guns at Clarke. The moment, she opened the door, she would be dead. She stepped away from the controls and lowered her gun. She was tackled by the guards, while Jasper and Maya shouted “No!”.  
She was brought back to the sick-bay, because she had gotten some bruises and the stitches had opened. The physician swore about the guards, not knowing, that Clarke had purposely twisted her arm in the guards grip, to open the stitches. She wanted to see as much of the bunker as possible, to plan her escape. Her timing for her attempted escape could have been better; about five minutes before her, a soldier had been brought into the sick-bay with symptoms of radiation-burns. While waiting to be checked out she had examined him as well as his papers: There had been blood in his lungs, his skin looked somewhere between a really bad sunburn and third degree burns. He must have inhaled the radioactive particles. Clarke thought, that they would cause internal bleeding, due to the mountain-men’s weak ability to handle radiation. When she used her power to examine him, she was confused: she had seen, that he was receiving blood. The hose came out of a strip running alongside the wall. She had expected to sense a dialysis-machine, or something like that, and then a blood-bag. She did feel a machine, that seemed to clean the blood, leaving only plasma, but behind the machine came not a bag, but a human body. When she understood the treatment right, the soldier’s blood-plasma, which was full of the radioactive particles, was pumped into this body, which could then get rid of the particles. Clean plasma was pumped from the body’s other arm into the soldier. The machine’s built was not symmetrical, so while the soldier’s blood-cells were directly returned into his system, the other body would suffer symptoms of anemia, if it stayed connected to that machine for longer than a few hours. A second concern was, that the strain of ridding a person of radiation, who did not reduce it on his own at all, was likely higher, than withstanding the invading radiation like the body normally would. Clarke looked around. All the beds were beneath the blood-strip. If multiple people got hooked up, the radiation could kill a grounder.  
She wanted to use her power again, to locate the body, when she heard the steps of the physician, so she sat back down on her bed.  
“You were lucky. Since your bleeding wasn’t to strong, I can let you go now. Please don’t come back.”, the woman joked.  
“I don’t plan to.”, Clarke straight up lied. Time to talk to the president again.


	18. Leaving Mount Weather

“Our parents and some of our friends must be out there somewhere. Can they come here, too?”  
“Yes, we noticed your parents coming down. They landed in a 100 times 100 mile sector.” President Wallace explained.  
“We are doing everything we can, to find them, but our scouts can only go out for so long and your people’s radios don’t seem to be working.” Clarke didn’t doubt, that the Mountain was the source for the jamming-signal, that had caused the exodus-ship to crash, and had prevented communication with the ark ever since.  
“Then let us go. We can stay outside infinitely.”  
“That’s true, you could survive the radiation. But it’s to dangerous. I really don’t want to send you children out, where you could be killed by the outsiders. We are at war with them. You know Clarke; when the first outsider had been spotted, my grandfather had thought, we could leave this grave, and had opened the door. 50 people died that day. Thank god, that someone had reacted quickly and closed the door immediately, or everybody in the hallway would have been dead. A team was sent, to find out, why they could survive. Not even half of them returned. We have been defending this mountain against them ever since.”  
His face returned from the seriousness back to his signature-smile: “I heard you are an artist as well.” he gave her a case. Back in the bed room, she opened it. It was filled with pencils and a sketchbook. Clarke smiled. She got to work, to update her map right away. She used the sketchbook, to illustrate some surface-impressions and sketched some of the rooms in the mountain, when she had an idea. She placed her hand on the wall. She could sense the layout of level five. Her perception was limited by the doors, because the worked as seals, when closed. Leaning at the wall with the ventilation, revealed, that each level seemed to be supplied by air separately.  
Back in the mess-hall, for break-fast the next morning, she got a surprise: the soldier, who had been in the sick-bay came out of the elevator. Most parts of his skin were back to normal. Some patches still locked sunburnt, and he had bandages on the places, where he had had the worst burns. He still looked weak, but not like someone, she would have declared a lost case just 20 hours ago. The method was highly effective. She ate and decided, to go to the sick-bay again. She didn’t bother talking to Monty or Jasper. They wanted to believe, they were safe.  
Back in the bedroom came the hard part. She had not seen any cameras, but that did not mean, that she wasn’t under surveillance. She started drawing on the sketchbook. A portrait. Then she pressed the pencil to hard on the paper, ruining the next few pages and breaking of the tip. She threw a tantrum and began hitting the metal bed-post. Then her hand missed the post and her stitched arm scraped over the edge.  
Not a good story, but nobody asked to many questions and now she was alone in the sick-bay again.  
She stood up and held her hand to the blood-strip. Her eyes followed the blood and found a door. Of course it was locked, but they hadn’t learned to much from her escape out of the quarantine-yard. The rooms were connected over the ventilation-system. The connection was not a shaft, but a hole in the wall with weak bars. The bars was only on the other side. Clarke pushed a shelf underneath the hole, got up and kicked, then she was on the other side. No turning back now. Not after what she had seen now:  
Dozens of cages, 1.5 times 1.5 times 1.5 meters each. Cramped in the cages were grounders. Right by the door was the body, she had sensed, or probability it was already another body. On a table was laying a grounder, unconscious and hooked up to machines, to watch his vitals. Since nobody was hooked up to him right now, he was relatively stable.  
Then, among the grunts and noises of pain and discomfort, she heard a familiar voice whisper: “Clarke?” It hadn’t been addressed to her, but Clarke still looked for the source and found it: a seemingly empty cage, except for white bindings.  
“Anya? I’ll get you out of here.” She found a metal rod and used it, to break the lock of the cage. It might hold against an underfed grounder with bare hands, but not against Clarke at perfect health with leverage. She opened the cage and helped Anya to her feet. Using her power, she numbed her feeling of soreness, and dragged her towards a door, that had no electrical lock and was labeled as an emergency-exit.  
“What are you doing?”  
“We don’t have time, to get them all out, but we have to escape and tell our people about this!”  
She opened the door, pulled Anya through it, then it fell shut behind them.  
They were locked in a little cell.  
An alarm-tone sounded.  
The floor opened, it was some kind of garbage-disposal-shaft.  
They fell on a pile of bodies, all clothed in bindings like Anyas. There were two railways, both going the same direction, on one a container-wagon was standing. When they heard voices approaching, they climbed in the wagon and played dead. The reapers had brought another wagon. A little later the reapers had thrown dead bodies on top of them and pushed the wagon through the tunnels. They stopped and took a few of the bodies out. Anya had stared all the time at one of the bodies. Clarke touched it.  
“He’s still alive.”, she whispered.  
Anya looked the man in the eyes. “Jo gonplei ste odon.” With that she broke his neck.  
Clarke spied out of the wagon. Not to close to them, the reapers had made a campfire.  
She helped Anya out of the wagon. On the rails was a pile of clothes, that prevented the wagon from rolling away. Clarke handed Anya some, when she refused she whispered: “You’ll freeze to death and your gift is useless with these bindings showing.”  
Clarke used her power, to map the tunnels. She found her perception limited, by what she presumed to be an exit and went that way, looking back, she found Anya gone. She started running. The reapers ability to navigate the tunnels was scary, as she suddenly saw torch-light coming from the tunnels in front of her, as well as from the way, she just came.  
The reapers had surrounded her. Then the mountain-men showed up. They held out devices, that resembled flashlights and suddenly a high pitched noise drove the reapers away. They grabbed her and escorted her through the tunnels.  
Then a thrown rock knocked one of them out. They turned around, but couldn’t see an attacker in the flashlight. Then there was a club, seemingly levitating towards them. As it came closer dark brown leather-clothes could bee seen.  
“What the fuck!” One of the guards went for his radio. Clarke pulled away his mask.  
“They don’t know about the gifts, don’t let them use the radios!”  
Anya returned to her natural color and attacked the next soldier.  
“The masks!” Clarke shouted to Anya, and pulled the next one down.  
It had been five soldiers. The last one had grabbed his radio but only screamed unintelligible into it, as Anya pulled away his mask. Clarke picked up one of the guns.  
“I think this way is an exit.” She lead the way. They were not very fast, so the mountain could be heard pursuing them, when they stepped into water. The exit she had sensed was a waterfall. Anya looked down and jumped. Clarke knew the theory, about jumping down a waterfall: the water caved out the riverbed deep enough, so as long as you dived in the right way, you could survive a jump from nearly every height unharmed. She hesitated. They mountain-men crossed the corner.  
“Clarke, drop the gun and surrender!”  
She was out of options.  
She dropped the gun.  
Then she jumped backwards.  
The impact on the water was painful.  
She lost control over her body for a few moments and swallowed water. When she surfaced, someone hit her head with a stone.  
When she woke up, her hands were tied to a leash, on which Anya held her.  
“I though you wouldn’t wake up at all.”  
“Anya, what the hell are you doing?”  
“I will go back to the Commander, but after what happened, I won’t go there without a prisoner. And now enough chatter. Get going!”  
With that she stood up and gave the leash a tug. Clarke followed. They hadn’t walked long, when they could see their pursuers. The made haste in another direction to lose them, then Anya stopped at a puddle and knelt down.  
“Good idea.” She got down as well, to drink something.  
Anya grinned: “No.” She took a hand full of mud and splashed it into Clarke’s face and hair.  
“Your blonde hair is visible from miles, you’re loud, leave trace like a raging pauna and your smell scares of the wildlife. No wonder, they can follow us so easily.”, she scolded.  
They went on for a while, until the could see the mountain-men again. They managed to lose them again, they were close to the top of a summit.  
“Clarke, you...”, Anya started again, but she interrupted her.  
“No, Anya. I’m covered in dirt, I’m walking on tip-toes and I’m stepping into your footprints. They are not following our traces, the are tracking us some way different.”  
She spied over the top of the summit and saw her the theory proven: the mountain-men were there, but they didn’t look at the way Anya and Clarke had taken, but at their current location.  
“Quick! Search yourself. It should feel like a bump under your skin.”  
Anya did as she was told and soon found something in her left arm. Without wavering, she bit into her arm and spat the foreign object out.  
They walked through the forest unfollowed. When they were close to the dropship, Clarke tried to reason with Anya for the last time: “Anya, you know I can help you!”  
“You can help me, by coming quietly.”  
“Okay, I take only so much shit.”, she wanted to provoke the woman and it worked.  
She came towards her, laughing. When Clarke’s hand touched her uncovered arm, Anya was out.  
When she woke up, she was the one on the leash.  
“I want you, to give the leash a little strain at all times, so I know, you won’t attack me from behind. And now come.”


	19. Fighting, winning, losing

They reached the dropship. There were traces, not older than a few days. On the dropship itself, she could see her mother’s writing. It was smudged by ash and wind, but she could make out the map.  
Then Anya let out a battle-cry and launched herself at Clarke. Clarke turned to late. Anya’s fist hit her jaw. She got back up and brought some distance between herself and the warrior.  
Anya was definitely better trained and had much more experience, normally Clarke wouldn’t stand a chance. But the woman had been locked in a small cage for days. She was underfed and exhausted from the escape. She had a still open wound on her arm. Clarke on the other side, was nearly unharmed. She was exhausted, to, but her last meal had been much more recently and her muscles were not cramped from sitting in a cage all day. If she would use her power, it wouldn’t even be a fight worth mentioning; she would just await Anya’s next attack and her counter would be the winning blow. But Anya needed to understand, that she needed Clarke’s help, so she had to win fair.  
“Anya, normally, I wouldn’t stand a chance against you, I’m sure, but right now any wild animal could cause your death. I don’t want to kill you.”  
“Stop talking and fight!” With that she attacked again.  
Clarke duck under the fist and punched her stomach. Anya reacted by bringing up her knee into her chest, drawing the air from her lungs. She staggered back, followed by Anya, giving her another kick, this time hitting her back. She fell over. Anya stood there and waited for her to stand up, laughing. In front of Clarke in the ash were some thick piece of wood, that had not been burnt entirely. She threw a hand full of ash at Anya’s face and swung the log with both hands at her.  
Anya anticipated the attack, though she didn’t dodge, she got her arms in the way of the club. When she was hit, she dropped to the ground, made a roll and was immediately back on her feet.  
Clarke knew, that the warrior would catch the weapon, if she tried to hit her with it again. When Anya came close again, she threw it at her instead, to land a blow at her face, while she caught it. She hit, but now Anya had the log. Instead of swinging it at the girl, she put it at her back and pulled at it from both sides, pressing the air from her lungs. Clarke’s arms were trapped between her own body and Anya’s arms. She headbutted Anya.  
Anya saw the attack coming and had turned her own head accordingly, but one of her hands gripping the log and trapping Clarke’s arms had slipped.  
Clarke pulled it up and punched Anya in the eye. The woman dropped the log and tried to get away, to get into a defensive stance, but Clarke stayed close to her and pulled her to the ground face first. She managed to wrap her arms around Anya’s neck in a choke-hold. Anya tried to get on her feet, so Clarke rolled around, without letting go of her neck, forcing her to follow her movements. The training paid up, as she was able to lock one of her arms between her lower and upper leg. She was now laying underneath Anya, both of them on their back.  
Clarke still had Anya in a choke-hold. One of her legs was wrapped around Anya’s right arm. With the other leg she secured her position. Anya tried to hit her with her left arm, but her face and stomach were out of reach. Struggling with her legs was useless as well, with Clarke on her back she couldn’t get up and with Clarke’s position secure she just risked breaking her neck, by rolling around.  
Anya grinned. It looked creepy with the blood coloring her teeth red.  
“You fight good, sky-girl.”, she admitted defeat.  
“I will let you go now. Try to attack me again, and I will use my gift, to turn you into a puppet!”  
They got up, caught their breaths and Clarke made sure, they both had no serious injuries.  
Then she led the way.  
“That map points into the opposite direction. Where are we going?”  
“My mum drew that map, so your people wouldn’t find the camp with it.”  
They walked, until it was dark. Then they could see a huge clearing, with the Alpha-station in the middle of it.  
“Okay, why was the map the wrong way?”, Anya asked curiously, when she could see the first lights of Alpha-station.  
“When I was still living in space and looked out of the window, earth looked like an upside-down map, so my father and me would always read maps upside-down, unless someone else was with us.”, Clarke explained. They were now on the edge of the clearing.  
“Much more important right now: We both know, that we can’t free our people, while still waging war against each other. I will talk to my people. Can you talk to your Commander?”  
“The Commander was my second, I should be able to get an audience.”  
“Okay, but be careful. If some reaper kills you, you help nobody.”  
Anya camouflaged herself. Then spotlight was pointed on them, and shots could be heard. Clarke felt a bullet entering her, but not exiting. It must have passed straight through Anya.  
The pain was extreme, even with her ability. Anya looked pale. Clarke touched her: she had two bullet-wounds. One had passed through her and was now in Clarke. The other was stuck in her hip.  
She held out one strand of her hair out to Clarke and whispered, her voice strained from the pain: “Ai gonplei ste odon.” Clarke remembered Tris’ death.  
She was losing consciousness, but she knew none of their wounds were lethal, if treated within the next hour. The last thing she heard, was the promise of exactly that: it was her mother’s voice: “Clarke? That’s Clarke...” She would wake up on a bed in the sick-bay.


	20. Setup for disaster

Nyko was just out of sight for a few moments, when Octavia heard something, she had heard only once before: the howling battle-cries of the reapers. There were sounds of fighting. When they ceased, Octavia got up. The pain was almost gone, but there was no trace of Lincoln.  
There were two possibilities: either the reapers or the people from his village were keeping him from coming back.  
She stood underneath the Lincoln-Memorial. There was a path, leading to TonDC. She followed it. Before she reached the village, she ran into a small group of warriors, lead by a dark-skinned woman, around her mid-forties, with a stern look on her face.  
She drew her sword. “Do you have Lincoln?”, she demanded to know.  
“No. Thanks to the traitor, we just lost our healer and four others to the reapers.”  
“Are you going, to get them back?”  
“Yes but you can’t come with us, sky-girl. Fighting reapers is hard enough, without watching over you.” With that, the woman lead her small group past Octavia.  
The group managed to get to the entrance to the tunnels before the reapers were there. The reapers took prisoners and tied them to a log, to lead them through the tunnels. Since they never brought a log, they made a detour, so the group could prepare an ambush.  
“The bait will lie down here. When they are distracted, the archers attack.”  
“Who will be the bait, Indra?”  
“The most expandable.”  
A young boy got a fright at her words.  
“I’m not talking about you.”, Indra reassured. “I’m talking about her.” She pointed at Octavia, who had been following them.  
“Just make sure, they don’t kill the prisoners.” She put some dirt on her face, so it wasn’t to obvious, that she was a bait, and lay down right at the cave-entrance.  
The grounders hid behind trees.  
The reapers came. There were thrice as many of them, as there were grounders laying in wait. They noticed Octavia. She let them feel her pulse, and drag her to her feet, before she let her aura out, so she wouldn’t be buried beneath the heavy bodies. She drew her sword and saw five reapers fall to the arrows. Indra and two other warriors had dropped their bows and were now charging in to protect the prisoners. Octavia had killed another reaper, this time using her sword, when she saw Indra being attacked by three reapers at once.  
She was a damn good fighter, defending successfully, but when she struck down the second, her sword got stuck. Dodging the swings of the last reaper, who was using his longer reach, she was with her back to a tree. The reaper was grinning and raised his weapon. Octavia’s blade went through his back, prodding out his chest.  
She helped the veteran up, then got to the log with the prisoners and pulled the bags, the reapers had put over their heads, away. Among four other she uncovered Nyko. Lincoln was not there.  
“Where is Lincoln?”  
“If the reapers have him, he is already in the tunnels.”  
“We have to get him!”  
“Listen, sky-girl: you fought well today, better than I thought you would, but if you try to attack the reapers in their tunnels, you will die. Six of TonDC’s warriors died today at the hands of the reapers. I don’t want to risk any more lives, to save that of a traitor. You helped returning these people to their families so I will let you go, but when you come here again, I will attack. Now, go!”  
With nothing to do Octavia went into the woods, headed for the dropship.

Bellamy and Murphy were in an improvised prison-cell in the depths of Alpha-station. They had been arrested, because they had fought, when they were found. They listened to Raven’s muffled screams, with Bellamy sending death-glares at Murphy.  
“Could you stop it?”, Murphy demanded, annoyed.  
“You’re a traitor and a murderer.”  
“I won’t argue the murderer, but are you talking about, what I told the grounders?”  
“Yes! You told them where to find us!”  
“Oh, yes and you wouldn’t have done this, because you are so much better than me.”  
“Yes!”  
“After just three days of torture at the hands of the grounders I have started to answer their questions. You wouldn’t have done this. It’s important that you believe that, because that’s what differs us from each other.”  
Kane came in.  
“We have to go and find our friends!”, Bellamy urged.  
“No, you won’t go. It’s to dangerous. What you have to do, is tell us, what we are dealing with. You said you were attacked by an army. Why did they attack? What did you do to provoke them?”  
“They attacked us, because we were there! We did nothing!”  
“What about the grounder army? How many were there? How were they armed?”  
“Hundreds? I forgot to count! They attacked us with bows and arrows, spears, swords, ax, fist, teeth.”  
“No guns?”  
“They didn’t have guns.”  
“They could have taken them from you.”  
“I had one, when they caught me the second time. They just threw it away.”, Murphy helped out.  
“Okay.” Kane gave the guards a signal.  
“What?”  
“When we put you on that ship, we said, you’d be pardoned for your crimes. I want to keep that promise. For now you two are normal citizens of Camp Jaha. That still means, you are not leaving the camp. Understood?”  
“Yes, Chancellor.”  
“Okay. But our conversation is still not totally over. What can you tell me about the grounders? Hierarchy, culture, anything.”  
“There is not much culture to talk about.”, Bellamy deadpanned. “A body on a stake is a pretty clear message.”  
“When I was in capture they talked about a commander. All the orders seemed to come from that guy”, Murphy supplied again.  
“Thank you, I can work with that. You are free to go.”  
“What do you want to do?”  
“If they have your friends captured, we might not be able to take them back alive by force. I will try to negotiate.”  
“Clarke already tried that.”, Bellamy scoffed. He wouldn’t try to discuss with Kane.  
He and Murphy left the Chancellor alone and went outside. Raven’s screams had stopped.  
A short time later, Abby Griffin and Finn had found them.  
“You have to find my daughter.”  
“Kane was pretty clear.” Murphy didn’t seem to mind the orders.  
“He already promised, to send a search-party.”, Bellamy mentioned.  
“We both know, by the time, he sends them out, it’s already to late and they have no chance of finding her anyway: the don’t know the terrain, and their tracking-skills are only theory!”, Finn made a point.  
“I admit, I think the same, but unarmed, we would just get ourselves killed. So unless one of you has an actual plan, we should stay in the camp.”, Bellamy declared.  
“I heard one of the scouts on the radio: they have caught a grounder and will be back in about two hours.”, Abby informed them.  
“So, what? He won’t tell us anything.”, Bellamy doubted.  
“Everybody will probably be at the west side of the camp. I can smuggle three guns to the east side of the camp. You get your guys ready and leave, when the whole camp gapes at the grounder.”

Finn and Bellamy talked to the other delinquents, namely Monroe, Noise and Murphy. They all agreed, to help search for Clarke, even if for various reasons. While Monroe, similar to Bellamy thought, that she owed it to Clarke, Noise was mainly looking for Schwartz, who had been in the dropship as well and therefor should be at the same place as Clarke. Murphy said, that it was less boring than staying in Camp Jaha, even though he knew the best of the risk, they were putting themselves into, after suffering torture at the hands of the grounders twice.  
They had packed backpacks with some food, bottles, ropes and other stuff, they could use.  
Finn lead the way. He had planned, to take a detour to the dropship, in case Kane noticed their departure and send a group to get them back. In this case, that group would reach the dropship before them, and they would see them and could change their ways undetected.

Then they saw an unnatural clearing. It was the crash-site of one of the stations.  
“Okay look, if you can find survivors. No salvaging! We don’t have enough time for that.”  
Noise made an omnipresent “Hello?” and instantly got “sht” from the others. Than a female voice could be heard from an abyss.  
“Finally someone comes here to help me, and it’s fucking Noise. Please tell me Schwartz is with you, and I just didn’t hear him!”  
“Actually, I came here to find him, but I will definitely tell him, that I met you, when I found him, Mel.”, he joked.  
“You know her?”, Murphy asked.  
“Schwartz’ girlfriend. We hate each other, but me and her BFF were a thing, before I got arrested, so I will have to help her out. By the way, have you seen Linda?”, Noise explained.  
“Yeah, blind-jokes don’t get old. She’s Mecha-station you retard! I just found out, what my mutation does, but I can’t use it properly yet, so if you could please help me back up?”  
They got to work and took one of the ropes. Bellamy volunteered, to go down the cliff and pick up Mel. He stood on the edge, while Finn, Murphy and Noise held the rope. Monroe stood watch.  
Bellamy was a few meters down, he could see the blind girl now. She was clinging to the only tree poking out in the middle of the cliff.  
“How did you even end up there?”, he wondered.  
“I must have been blown out, or I would have been down there, like the rest. One moment, I’m sitting inside, next thing I know I get my fucking ribs broken by the only tree in the whole area, and I have to hold onto it, to not fall to my death.”  
Then it turned bad: Monroe got hit by an arrow. The wound was not lethal, but it wasn’t one arrow, they had to worry about. Finn and Murphy held the rope while they dropped themselves behind some rubble as cover, while Noise dropped it, and pulled Monroe into cover.  
“Noise, do the horn!”  
“They are not stupid. At the dropship, I tried the fog-horn right at the start, but now they have some kind of code, and I don’t know it. All I can do, is draw their fire from you.”  
“Murphy, hold the rope!”, Finn shouted, he grabbed his gun and fired into the bushes, the arrows were coming from.  
Bellamy had a strange feeling: he felt, like he was back on the ark, his body only pulled downward by his clothes. Murphy seemed to be able, to hold his weight alone.  
Bellamy had almost reached Mel, when an arrow almost hit Murphy’s hand.  
In shock, he let go of the rope. To his surprise, it didn’t move.  
From the cliff came Mel’s angry voice again: “What the shit? You were supposed to be saving me!”  
Mel had grabbed Bellamy with one hand and put it back to the tree, when he started holding onto her. The weight at the rope was 1,300g; the total weight of the rope itself, Bellamy's body was weightless.  
A fog-horn sounded. The grounders played two short tunes. The first horn answered with the same two tunes, but elongated.  
“Really?”, Noise muttered.  
The grounders took cover from the oncoming fog, so Finn and Murphy could pull up Bellamy and Mel.  
“We have to get cover from the fog, too!”, Bellamy ordered and got his backpack, for the tent.  
“Someone is walking towards us.”, Mel informed them. Octavia came out of the woods, grinning.  
“I keep on saving your asses!”, referring to Bellamy and Finn.  
“I’m also happy, you’re still alive! Where is Lincoln?” Bellamy hadn’t thought, that he’d meet his sister so soon again.  
“The reapers got him. He may still be alive in the tunnels, but without help, I have no chance of finding him. How was live treating you guys? I thought you would stay at the dropship with the others.”  
“They were taken. We’re looking for them right now, but with an arrow sticking out of Monroe and Mel’s bad shape, we should probably head back.”, Bellamy thought out loud.  
“I’m not going back without Clarke!”, Finn stated agitatedly.  
“What about you, guys?”  
“Unless I want Schwartz, to pull me into a dark alley, when he’s back, I better make sure Mel makes it to Camp Jaha alive”, Noise said.  
“I will help you.”, Octavia offered Noise.  
“I don’t want to go back.” Of course Murphy pretended to be bored.  
“Okay, it’s decided: Finn and Murphy, you take one gun each and go find Clarke. Me, O and Noise get Mel and Monroe to Dr. Griffin.”, Bellamy decided.  
So they departed.

Finn and Murphy reached the dropship.  
“So, tracker. Anything?”  
“There are lots of footsteps and traces of something being dragged that way.” Finn stood still, sniffing.  
“So, what are we waiting for?”, Murphy asked.  
“The smell-traces: The stronger one goes the same way as the other traces as well, but there is another one, much weaker going that way.”, Finn pointed into the woods.  
“The stronger one must be the fresher one...”  
“The grounders know about my ability. When they caught Clarke and me, they covered their smell with boar-pelts.”  
“So?”  
“I think, they carried Clarke away along the weaker trace, covering her smell for a good part, then came back and made the stronger trace, using clothes, which they dragged over the ground, to prevent being found.” Finn had made his decision and ran into the forest, following the weaker trace.  
They found a small camp, about six people, maybe more inside the tents.  
Finn and Murphy looked at them with the scopes of their guns.  
“Look at that one, the one-eyed. His has her watch.”  
“So what? He took it from the loot?”  
“It was her father’s watch. She wouldn’t have surrendered it willingly. This one must know, where they brought her!”  
They stayed out of sight, until the one-eyed went to relieve himself. Murphy distracted him, so Finn could sneak up to him and knock him out.  
“Great. Now we just need to take him somewhere, where none will hear his screams.”, Murphy deadpanned, showing no emotion at the prospect of interrogating a grounder.  
“I know just the place.”  
They dragged him to the bunker, Finn had found, which had been dubbed “art-supply-store” by him and Clark, because the first thing, he had brought from there had been pencils and crayons.  
The grounder woke up, tied to a chair, underground. Different than Lincoln, he showed, that he was afraid.  
“Okay, let me talk, I know how this procedure works.”, Murphy said, with a sadistic grin.  
“Listen closely: Do you see these scars?”, Murphy pointed a flashlight at his face, showing off his scars. “I got them, when I was in custody of your people, so don’t try to pretend, you couldn’t speak English. Those guys were working three days on me, before I talked, so I really want some payback, but if you tell us, where our friends are, it won’t come to this.”  
“I don’t know, where you’re friends are! Are you sky-kru? Do you ask, because of the plunder? We found it laying on the ground, close to your burnt camp. I have nothing to do with those, that took your friends!”, he hastily said, with fear in his voice.  
While Murphy still considered, what the grounder had said, Finn hit the man in the face, so the chair fell down and he was now laying on the ground.  
Finn held Clarke’s watch in his field of view and shoved the barrel of his gun into his groin: “I know the owner of this watch: she wouldn’t leave it laying around, so you must have taken it from her! Now tell me where she is, or you won’t be only one-eyed!”  
“Okay, okay! Not far from your camp is a village...”, the one-eyed man explained them the exact location.  
“Now, what do we do with him?”, Murphy hadn’t finished his question, when Finn had already shot him and gave an answer: “If we let him go, he will warn his friends.”  
So they headed for TonDC.


	21. Murder

Bellamy’s group had not been gone long and yet missed a lot: Kane had attempted to talk to the imprisoned grounder. When the grounder refused to say anything at all, like Bellamy had already predicted, Kane decided, to let the grounder lead him to the commander. (“It could be a trap!”  
“It is very likely, but judging by what Murphy said, they won’t just kill me, knowing I’m the leader. I’ll meet the commander either way.”  
“Don’t tell me, you actually plan to negotiate a truce, while being tortured by them!”  
“I don’t plan to be tortured; It’s the worst-case-scenario but it’s what I’m willing to do.”)  
Due to the likelihood of him ending up imprisoned, Kane had made Dr. Griffin chancellor.  
They were welcomed dearly, especially, since they brought the first survivor, from another station. Their attempts, to contact any of the other stations had not been successful so far.  
When it got dark, Clarke was found, with the grounder woman, that had lead the negotiations on the bridge.  
Both were unconscious, but nothing Dr. Griffin couldn’t fix. Both had one bullet stuck in their bodies. Anya had an additional wound, where Clarke’s bullet had passed through her.  
With Dr. Griffin’s ability to let tissue regrow within seconds, that one was closed easily.  
“Okay, I don’t want to extract the bullets, when we have no sedatives. Right now, neither of the bullets are threatening any organs. As soon as Clarke wakes up, inform me, Jackson. Until then it should stop the grounder, from running away.”  
Clarke woke up. In her hand was a strand of hair. She tried to sit up, but with the bullet still inside of her, every movement hurt. Abby came in, only a little later. With Clarke awake, the removal of a foreign object without anesthetics was much easier.  
“I came here with a woman! Where is she?”, Clarke asked worried, although she knew the answer.  
“We brought her in with you. She had a bullet stuck in her hip, so we thought, she wouldn’t go far, but when Jackson read on the monitors, that she woke up and came to check, she was gone without a trace.”  
“She’s a mutant too, she can turn invisible. Maybe she’s still within earshot of the speakers. Try to get her back here, she won’t reach the Commander in her current state.”, Clarke said, getting up.  
“Wait, what are you talking about? We thought the grounders had kidnapped you! Where have you been?”, her mother asked worriedly.  
“I was in Mt. Weather. There are other survivors, who had survived the war in there. They still hold the rest of my friends prisoner.” Clarke explained in short, “What had happened here?”  
“Kane is on his way, to negotiate a truce with the grounders, so I’m the chancellor now. We have found six of your friends, including Bellamy, Raven and Finn. Bellamy just came back with his sister and a survivor from another station.”  
“We should wait with trying to find the other stations, until we have a truce with the grounders. I think the Mountain is blocking our radios. What about Finn?”  
“He is still searching for you.”  
Clarke ran out. The mountain-men had thrown away their clothes, before transporting them to the Mountain. Her scent would most likely guide him to an innocent plunderer. She found Bellamy and Octavia. They were both happy, to see her well. “Octavia, do you know a grounder-village, close to the dropship?”, she cut the welcome short.  
“Yes why do you ask?”  
“Because I wasn’t abducted by grounders!”  
Octavia understood and wanted to lead the way, but they were stopped at the gate.  
Abby had caught up to Clarke. “Where do you want to go?”  
“Finn is about to barge into a village, full of innocent citizens, looking for me. If we don’t stop him before that, the grounders will want retaliation!”  
Abby hesitated, to let her daughter go, after she had just gotten her back, but she gave in: “Open the gate!”

Finn and Murphy had found the village and were scouting it, using their scopes again. It was rather big, but almost empty right now, they could only see about 50 people.  
“None of the houses is big enough, to hold over 40 people at once. Unless they have some kind of cave beneath the village, Clarke is not here.”, Murphy doubted the last words of the one-eyed plunderer.  
“I can smell Clarke, she is here.”  
“Do you have a plan? I mean other than threatening them and hoping for the best.”  
“We light a fire. When they are busy, we take a look around.”  
“I’ll follow your lead.”  
It was easy to light the fire, without being seen. It was seen a few moments later and chaos broke out. About four grounders were extinguishing the fire, while the rest ran around, making sure, that everybody was safe from the flames. Finn had found the source for Clarke’s smell in the village: like he had guessed at the dropship, the stronger trace lead to her clothes. They were in a pile next to a hut full of pelts.  
Then he was seen. Before he could react an old man shouted out a warning: “Sky-kru!” So much for going unnoticed.  
He shot in the air, he and Murphy herded the grounders together in the middle of the village in a fencing.  
“We are looking for our friends! Tell us where you took them!” Finn was desperate, because Clarke’s trace ended with her jacket.  
A big bearded man with tribal tattoos on his face spoke up: “Please, I am Nyko. The chieftess and the warriors are not here. I will talk to you, just don’t hurt those villagers.”  
“Where are our friends?”, Finn demanded.  
“They are not here! A hunting-party saw your camp destroyed and found these clothes. Since you didn’t seemed to be needing them anymore, they brought them here. None from this village has seen your missed friends.”, Nyko answered, knowing, that they were not referring to Octavia.  
“Then you won’t say anything, if we search the houses for them.” The fire had been put out already.  
“Do what you must, you won’t find them here. Just don’t destroy this village.”  
Finn ran into the houses, letting Murphy guard the villagers.  
He had checked every house for hidden tunnels, but except the old structure to the far side of the town, which was made of concrete, all the buildings were simple wooden huts.  
He found no further trace of Clarke or the others.  
“Dude, that guy, that had her watch would have said anything, you held a gun to his balls, and he already looked, like I scared the shit out of him.”, Murphy stated his doubts. The fear of the grounders was so apparent, that he could smell it without a super-nose.  
“The man, that told you to look for your friends here, was it a one-eyed man, about your size, with dark hair?”, Nyko reacted to what Murphy had said.  
“Yes, a friend of yours?”  
“Hardly! He is a thief and was banished from the village. He send you as his revenge!”  
Finn pointed his gun at the man again, who was again holding back a teenage boy from standing up.  
“Wait, Finn, that actually makes sense. Why would the grounders undress them, just to kidnap them?”  
When Finn turned his head, to look at Murphy, the situation escalated: The boy who had already tried to, got up and ran towards the house, behind Finn. Finn saw the movement in his periphery and shot. An older man, probably his father, cried out and ran the same direction, either to attack Finn or to look at the boy.  
Finn shot again.  
Others got up, some to flee, some to attack Finn.  
Nyko tried to calm his people and get Finn to stop at the same time.  
Murphy was in shock, to see Finn outburst in violence. Unable to act, he felt somewhat sickened by himself because all he could think of, was a line from an old comedy, he had seen on the ark: “Dude, stop kicking people into the pit of death!”  
Suddenly a girl’s shout stopped the massacre: Clarke was standing at the entrance to the village, together with Octavia and Bellamy.  
Finn immediately relaxed and smiled happily: “I found you!”  
18 innocent people lay dead on the ground.  
On the way back, nobody dared to break the silence, afraid of the conversation that would come, once somebody spoke.


	22. Jahas way down

Thelonius Jaha had sacrificed himself, to give the rest of the ark a chance to survive. At first, he had tried to talk to the stations, coordinating their reunion, but as soon as they reach American airspace he lost their signal. With a week worth of breathable air at most, he went to drink in memory of his son and die. Then he heard the cries.  
Somewhere on the main ring of the ark, somebody had left a baby. He ran around, searching for it. He found it in a drawer. It must have been an illegal baby, like Octavia Blake. He couldn’t let it die here with him. He went to the computer, to search for a way, to get it to the ground safely. The exodus-ships were no option. The ark was still able supply itself with power, but charging the ship, while still keeping the ventilation, the temperature-regulation and other vital systems running, would take longer than the week of time he had.  
Then he found something: a nuclear warhead, with a missile. It would carry him to the right area, without burning up in the atmosphere. It had retrorockets and parachutes, to safely stop the missile, in case the launch had been due to a mistake of any kind. Two problems remained. First: the missile was in another part of the ring. When Diana Sydney had started the exodus-ship, she had layed waste throughout the ark. The part, where the rocket was in, could now only be accessed through an airlock. Jaha would manage to find a spacesuit somewhere. He would have to detach it from the hose. The suits on the ark were not made, to go out for long time spans, without supply from the hoses. To make it to his destination, without suffocating, he had no time, to climb along the ring. He would have to jump. Since he wouldn’t be able, to correct his jump in any way, his aiming had to be precise. Once he reached the airlock, one problem remained: The missile was not made, to carry a person. He checked the computer, for anything, he could throw out of the missile, to make room for himself and the baby. The warhead itself, was to big to be removed, Jaha thought. But he wasn’t going to use the detonator, if he settled for only hitting the right continent, he could spare a lot of the flight-control systems, without the option of course-correction, the corresponding fuel-tanks became expandable. With some rearranging they would fit in, with him and the baby sharing a spacesuit.  
He put on the spacesuit. He had made a sling around his neck, to hold the baby. It whimpered, when he closed the spacesuit. He locked the helmet. He went into the airlock. When the outer door opened, he could see his destination: Mere thirty meters, but through the void of space it locked absolutely unreachable. Due to the rings rotation, he would have to aim at a point further away, the computer had told him. He braced himself, he bend his knees, he let go of the grips, his hands had held and stretched his legs.

Being in outer space, without anything to hold onto was terrifying. He could see the whole time, that his aiming had been good. He had not hit his mark, but he was only off by a few meters.  
Then breathing got harder.  
The visor misted up from his breath.  
Thinking and moving felt incredibly tiring.  
He collided with the ark and was repelled back into the void, nearly missing his opportunity to hold onto something. He couldn’t tell, what it was. He crawled towards the door of the airlock, he had aimed for. It was closed.  
Of course it was closed, nobody opened it.  
It took him some time, until he remembered, that the airlocks had controls on both sides.  
It felt impossible, to operate the terminal, with the mist in the visor. Movement caused him, to turn his head. The door was open. He had to get inside. Inside he had to push a button. He did.  
Suddenly the blood in his ears wasn’t the only sound he could hear. The inner door opened with a hiss. He unsealed the helmet and could breath again.  
When he opened the suit, the sling was empty.  
“We’ll meet again, but you can still do something.” There stood his son. Like the baby he was only a hallucination.  
“But I...”, Jaha wanted to cry out, but was interrupted by his son.  
“You sent me to die, you lost me, you made mistakes. But you can still help your people! Right now they are on the ground, fighting for their lives. They need you! Get to work.”  
One and a half day without rest later, Jaha had directed the missile, to fire towards the last whereabouts of the 100.  
He had taken his place inside of it and started it. “I’m coming home.”


	23. The Commander

When he woke up, he felt incredibly hot. Something touched his lips and he instinctively took a sip. It was similar to water, but it had a bitter taste to it. He managed to open an eye: in front of him was a person, tall, clothed in rough pieces of fabric, the face veiled, a tattoo visible nevertheless. Jaha wanted to flinch away, but was lacking the power to. The person pressed the cup at his lips again. He drank thirstily. Then everything went dark again.  
He was awake. The figure, that had let him drink was there again. With a female voice it said something, he couldn’t understand. When he looked at her she spoke again: “My son brought you here. He said you fell from the sky.”  
“That’s true. I tried to aim for the west of the former United States.”  
“You are in the dead-zone.”  
“That doesn’t sound, like you live here by choice.”  
“Yes.” The woman didn’t seem to want to talk to the man she saved. She gave him a bowl.  
The contents looked like stomped beetles, centipedes and worms. Considering the circumstances, Jaha considered it a grand offer.  
A boy came in, his clothing had the same style as the woman, but he had his face unveiled. Out of his lower jaw poked deformations. His jawline was crooked and his mouth didn’t close fully.  
Jaha flinched at the sudden sight.  
The boy saw it and ran out.  
“No, stop!” The boy stopped, apparently, he had been taught English.  
“You startled me, I didn’t hear you coming in, that’s all. You don’t have to wear that around me.”, Jaha comforted the boy, when he grabbed for his veil.  
“Do you know now, why he normally has to wear the veil?”  
“I assume, not everybody is as tolerant, as I am. What happened to him?”  
“He was born like that. It happens. When it does, the child is cast out, to cleanse the bloodline.”  
“Radiation.”, Jaha explained, he had heard about similar cases on the ark.  
“Destiny. I couldn’t abandon my son, so I left my village. I was a warrior, that’s why I speak your language. What I did is considered treason, so we, me, my son and my husband are out here to search the City of Light.”  
“The City of Light?”  
“Maybe it’s just a myth, but for people like me, it’s our only hope. Beyond the dead-zone there is a city, where everybody is welcome.”  
“I hope you come there safely. My people will need a safe place to live as well. I will find it. When I know, where the City of Light is, I will lead everybody there.”  
“Let’s hope that.”  
Jaha spend the rest of the day talking to the boy. The boy seemed to like him, but always when Jaha asked certain things, like their names, the mother prevented the boy from answering, by talking to him with a stern voice in their native tongue.  
In the early morning of the next day, the boy shock Jaha awake: “Thelonius, you must go!”  
“Why?”  
“There are evil men coming for you!”  
He got up and looked out the tent. Four riders were approaching. Suddenly the boy looked confused. “Why is father with them?”  
His mother answered, shame in her voice: “There is a bounty for sky-people.”  
The boy tried to get Jaha to flee again: “They will kill you, if you are still here, when they reach us.”  
“They will kill your father, if I am not here.”, towards the mother he asked: “What do you get?”  
“A horse. With a horse we can make it through the dead-zone.”  
“I hope you make it.” He came towards the horses.  
“I will come with you, you can let them be!”  
His hands were tied and he was loaded on one of the horses. Then they beat one of the riders of his horse and left in full gallop. They didn’t want them to try to follow and break him free. When the tent of the family was out sight, he got a bag over his head.  
He felt the air getting milder. They stopped once. He was fed once, but the bag was never lifted higher than his lips.  
When the bag was taken away, he was in a cell. Through a hole in the ceiling, day-light came in.  
He was shackled and chained to one of the walls, then he was left alone.  
Some time later something could be heard from above.  
Marcus Kane fell through the hole.  
They had told each other, what had happened so far. Since then, two days passed.  
“Two days, without food, without water!”, Kane was desperate, that his attempt to talk to the Commander had failed.  
“How often did we not have water on the ark for two days?”, Jaha said calmly.  
A young girl came in, probably still a teenager. She had a clean piece of cloth, a bowl of water and a cup. She gave them to drink,then she used the wettened cloth, to clean the wounds the shackles had made on their limbs.  
“Thank you. What is your name?”, Jaha asked the girl.  
“I am Lexa.”  
“What will happen now?”  
“Sky-kru has attacked a village and killed 18 innocent people. The Commander will ask for your blood.”  
“A village was attacked?”  
Lexa didn’t have the chance to answer, as a big man entered. He was about two meters in size, had a long beard and tattoos on his face. He had a normal sword hanging from his side and another one on his back. The sword on his back looked giant, even on him. The two former chancellors assumed, that it was purely ceremonial, as it would be much to heavy and big to be maneuverable in combat.  
He was flanked by two other warriors, likely his guards, both tall men, that looked small next to him.  
He spoke in an authoritative tone.  
“The Commander says: Blood must have blood.”  
When Lexa had finished the translation, he threw a dagger between them and said something, then without waiting for Lexa to translate, he left.  
“One of you dies, through the hand of the other. The other one can then try to negotiate a truce with the Commander.”  
“But we didn’t do that!”, Jaha protested.  
“That doesn’t matter. Blood must have blood. That is our way.”  
“There has to be another way!”  
“There is no other way.”, Kane said calmly, the dagger in his hands, “You have to kill me.”  
“No, I won’t kill you!”  
“I don’t want to kill you either, but you will have to, if you want to save our people.”  
“Then kill me!...”  
“We already had that discussion, once. In my eyes, nothing has changed since then.”, Kane interrupted his predecessor.  
“No!”, Jaha was out of arguments, but remained on his position.  
“It has to be. Tell the Commander, that we have made a decision.” Lexa called out in her language. Kane grabbed one of Jaha’s hands and held it to the dagger, which he thrust into himself.  
Jaha stopped the blade, before it could harm his organs much, but Kane was wounded.  
“Help him!”, Jaha shouted to the servant-girl begging.  
She wettened the cloth again and approached Kane to use it as a pressure-bandage and stop the bleeding.  
Jaha grabbed her and held the dagger to her throat. The man came back in.  
“Let us go, or she dies!”, Jaha demanded.  
“Jaha don’t do this.”, Kane warned. Something was odd: None of the warriors locked even the slightest bit surprised. Lexa spoke English, according to Jaha the warrior-language. She had been left alone with two prisoners with a weapon, both facing death.

Lexa said something to the man with the huge sword.  
Suddenly Jaha had lost the dagger and Lexa threw him across the room, away from the wall he was chained to. The chains stretched and he hung in midair for a split-second, his arms and legs bend backwards. Then he fell down. Unable to break his fall, his face hit the ground hard.  
One of the guards unchained him, and began beating him, while another opened Kane’s restraints, holding him down painfully.  
Lexa walked towards the big man. He gave her a shoulder-guard, that looked, liked a part of a tire. Connected to the shoulder-guard was a red cape. She put it on and turned back to the prisoners.  
The Commander had seen, what she wanted to see.  
Jaha was held upwards, to face her. “You will go back to your people, and deliver them a message from me: Leave or die. You have three days.” He was brought out of the cell and would be delivered close to the sky-kru camp, from where he should be able, to find the way himself.  
“You will stay with me.”, she said to Kane, when Jaha was away.  
To his surprise, he was neither chained, nor locked up.


	24. Bad Weather

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get it? It´s bad weather, like acid fog but also weather like Mount Weather.
> 
> I´ll see myself out

Chancellor Griffin didn’t like the situation, Finn had put them in. Retaliation was sure to come. Clarke said, that the last time, the Commander had sent 100 more warriors, to make sure, that Anya would succeed. Since that had not worked and Camp Jaha had about 800 residents, the coming grounder-army would be multiple thousands.  
The only reason, they didn’t pack their things and followed Jaha, was that nobody wanted to abandon the kids, that were still in Mt. Weather.  
There had been a trial over Finn, where he had been found not guilty, but everybody was aware, that that meant nothing.  
Camp Jaha was guarded by an electric fence and at least twenty guards in every shift patrolling it.  
Raven had returned to working on the radio to contact the other stations. It had turned out, that Clarke had been right with her assumption, that Mt. Weather was blocking them, so they set out, to destroy their transmitter-tower.  
Raven had packed some bombs and her own radio and was coming together with Abby, Bellamy, Octavia and a few guards.  
Clarke stayed back with Finn.

Of course the group meet grounders. Octavia, Bellamy and two of the guards, kept them busy, so Abby and Raven could advance towards the antenna. Then they heard the horn signal, that had ended most of their fights with the grounders. Octavia found the entrance to an underground-garage, where their group could take refugee.

Abby’s group had tents with them, that shielded them from the fog. With nothing else to do, Raven was playing with the radio. She was going through the frequencies, to find the limits of the Mountain’s jamming-signal.  
“Hey, they are blocking every frequency, except this one!”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Here, this is clear! We found their channel.”  
“Honestly, I can’t tell the difference between this and the jamming-signal.”, Abby confessed to Raven.  
“It’s encoded, but since their walkies are not bigger than mine, I should be able, to crack it with what I have with me.” Raven left the frequency-button in it’s position and fidgeted on other parts of the device, altering the sound it made.  
“What are you doing?”  
“They are covering up their communication, by adding a disturbance. For those walkies to be able, to filter it out, when they are talking to each other, it must be a simple tone, that's repeated rapidly. That's the noise we hear. To filter it out, I have to find the beginning of the loop. I had the original recorded, so I have enough tries.  
Suddenly the unintelligible noise became a voice: “...Wait a little more until the veil has lifted.”  
Another voice answered: “Positive, it should take about one hour, until everything is free again. I doubt, that we caught anything: the outsiders have made quite an efficient warning system and the arkers recognize their warning. By the time you come there, they will all be gone.”  
Raven was baffled: “Do you know what that means?”  
“The mountain-men are responsible for the acid-fog!”  
“And now we are able, to listen to them! We don’t need those bombs any longer.”  
“But without back-up from the other stations, we can’t fight them.”  
“We can work around that, but we can’t just give away an advantage like this!”  
Abby still hesitated.  
“I know what Clarke would do.”, Raven grinned.  
Abby was convinced, maybe Kane had success after all, or the grounder Clarke had brought to the camp had made it to the Commander. In that case, they could search for the other stations the conventional way.  
She called out to the other tents: “Captain Byrne?”  
“Yes?”  
“Pack the bomb, when the fog is gone, so are we!”  
“Aye, Chancellor!”

In the underground-garage Bellamy and Octavia had separated from the guards. They found nothing interesting, until they could hear rapid gunfire.  
“Reapers.”, Octavia guessed.

They ran towards the shooting to help them, but stopped: they were already to late.  
On the floor were a few dead reapers.  
“Lincoln!?” Octavia was shocked to see him bent over one of the dead guards, eating.  
He stood up.  
She had a pistol in her hand and Bellamy had a rifle.  
Bellamy looked at his sister, seeking allowance to shoot.  
When Lincoln showed no sign of recognition, Octavia shoot his leg.  
They ducked behind a car.  
“That’s Lincoln!”, Octavia said in disbelief.  
“What do we do?”  
“I will play bait, you knock him out.”  
“Okay.”  
“Bellamy. Don’t kill him. If that’s necessary, I will do it myself!”  
Octavia stood a few meters behind the edge of a wall, pointing her flashlight at herself and then on Lincoln, to attract him.  
When he reached the corner, Bellamy hit him with the but of his gun.

In Mt. Weather, Jasper began to see Clarke’s point. He hadn’t seen her for days. When he asked Maya about her, she said something, that wasn’t very convincing: “I asked around: I was told, that Clarke had a burn-out or something, had tried to kill herself and is now in closed psychiatric treatment.”  
“That sounds nothing like Clarke.”  
“It doesn’t make sense: On the one side, they say she’s paranoid, on the other side, they don’t let her friends see her.”, Maya admitted.  
Then there was an alarm-tone. Maya panicked and headed to the door, which had closed itself.  
Jasper and Monty took a few seconds, to understand her fear, until they saw her skin turning sunburn-red.

Maya was quickly brought to the sick-bay. There had been a radiation-leak, they were informed. That happened in the Mountain.  
Jasper looked at Dr. Tsing pleadingly. “She will get better, right? It’s not the first time, something like this happened, you can help her.”  
“Honestly, I don’t know, if she will survive. She was locked in pretty long, before we could close the leak. The standard-treatment can’t save her at this point.”  
“But?”, it was more a plea then a question.  
“Well in theory, one of you could work as a blood-cleaner. The person would provide her body with clean blood and help her get rid of the contamination.”  
“I’ll do it.”  
Monty was more suspicious: “What’s the standard treatment?”  
“The standard treatment consists mainly of clean blood-reserves we have stored up”, she answered, while she tested Jasper’s blood-type.  
“Good news: You two are compatible, we don’t have to work around with the dialysis-machine.”  
Jasper lay down next to Maya, two tubes connected them now, one from her to him, one back.  
“It doesn’t feel to bad.”  
“That’s normal: the medication we gave her, is now affecting you, too.”  
“Normal? I though, we were testing a theory right now?”, Monty quibbed in.  
“Sorry, I should have said: 'That’s to be expected.'”, The doctor answered.  
“From here on, we will have to wait for a few hours. Why don’t you wait for your friend to come back outside?”  
“Or, I will sit here.”, Monty answered, sitting down besides Jasper’s bed.

Maya recovered extremely fast, according to Dr. Tsing. President Wallace thanked Jasper for his bravery.  
“I did, what I could, to save her. Everybody in my situation would have done the same.”  
“I hoped, that was true, but it isn’t. The truth is, that you risked your life, to save one of us.”  
“I’m not an expert around people, but I can tell, you want something from me.”  
“You are right: Maya’s recovery was a miracle. So far, radiation has been the greatest danger to us, but if you could make your friends donate their blood or volunteer for similar therapies, we needn’t fear radiation anymore!”  
“After what you have done for us, that’s the least I can do. I do have a question.”  
“Ask.”  
“You may already be aware, but we are missing Clarke. Maya said, she was in psychiatric treatment.”  
“And you think, that is not the case.”  
“Yes.”  
“Again, you are right. The truth is, that Clarke, while she was in the sick-bay again, had attacked five guards, who died in the process, and is now outside of Mt. Weather. We didn’t tell you, because we thought, that it would cause a negative reaction. I view that as a mistake now. In a few hours a search-party will leave to find her. If you want, you can join them.”  
“And we can bring her back here? Together with anyone else, we might find?”  
“I can’t assure you that. Depending on our situation, we don’t have the resources, to decontaminate you.”  
“So if I leave, I must accept, that it might be forever.”  
“Essentially yes, and you have to decide within the next hour.”  
“We will stay here.”

Jasper had hoped, that the other delinquents would feel enough gratitude, to follow President Wallace’ appeal.  
“Come on guys, they saved us, it’s the least we can do.”  
“You puked for hours.”  
“That was only, because Maya was already half dead, when they hooked me up to her.”  
The others disbanded.  
“They gave us cake!”  
Nobody listened.  
Monty and Jasper were alone again, when Maya came in.  
“Hi! How are you?” In her hand was a note-book, the first page read: “Act normal”  
“Hi Maya, it’s nice to see you.” she flipped to the next page: “They listen”  
“Do you want to join me for lunch?”  
In the mess-hall they sat together at a table.  
“The leak was no accident.”  
“What?”  
“They wanted to test, how well your blood works. They knew, you’d volunteer.”  
“What are you talking about?”, Jasper said, keeping a smile on his face.  
“I have to show you something.”

Jasper, Monty, Miller and Schwartz followed Maya to the storeroom in level 4.  
“So, what do you want to show us?”  
Maya stepped aside. Behind her was an opening in the wall, to allow ventilation between this room, and the chamber on the other side. The opening was barred.  
They locked through the bars and saw a huge chamber, full of cages. In the cages were humans.  
“What is this?”  
“The standard-treatment against radiation. The same, as with you, but they don’t do it voluntarily.”  
“Who knows?”  
“Everybody, but we try not to think about it.”, Maya confessed.  
“And why do you show this to us now?”  
“Because I think, that this is, where you will end up, if we don’t prevent it.”  
“So, what now?”  
“For now, we give them, what they want: Blood-donations.”  
“And then?”  
“We are criminals, right? Time to behave like that.”


	25. Cave-in

Maya was decontaminating the control-room, when Jasper, Monty, Miller and Harper were standing in front of the president’s office. Monty managed to override the door-control.  
“Why do I have to stand guard?”, Harper hissed.  
“Monty is good with computers, Miller is a thief and it was my idea.”, Jasper answered.  
They found a few things: President Wallace had not lied, about Clarke fleeing.  
But almost everything else had been a lie: There were pictures of Alpha-station crashed on the ground.  
“When he offered me to go, he knew, I wouldn’t want to.”, Jasper reasoned  
“So, we know, that we are prisoners, and that they want our blood. What’s the plan?”  
“We give them what they want. As long as they can get our blood without struggle, we should be safe, until Clarke gets us out.”

Back in the dormitory, they turned up the music, to talk. “Has anyone seen Harper?”  
“She was with us, seconds ago.”  
“Okay, no change in the plan: we pretend, as if we hadn’t noticed.”

Jasper talked to Maya, about making contact to the outside, and she managed, to organize blueprints of level five.  
Monty looked at them: “This is an extension of the radio-tower, so a walky-talky can talk freely talk to one outside. From here I should be able, to get a signal on the ark-channel.”  
“What do you need?”, Maya asked.  
“A radio or a walky-talky, some copper-wire, access to one of the rooms, that border this, and a big hammer.”  
“I can do that.”

They meet in the corridor. Maya must have just gotten from her shift, because she had a cleaning-cart with her. She lead Jasper, Monty, Miller and Schwartz into a storeroom.  
“Welcome to the art-gallery!”, she introduced. While the door had no lock, a sign prohibited entrance.  
“The president is not the only one, who likes to draw. The space, to hang all the paintings is limited, so most of them end up here. Wallace prefers realistic paintings, but my taste is more … sinister”, she said to Jasper, as she lead him through the shelves. She pulled out a canvas. It looked like a darker version of “Starry night”.  
“I like it.”, Jasper commented, sounding as nervous as Maya.  
“We still have to wait five minutes. I have a question.”  
“What is it?”  
“What is it, with you guys?”  
“We already told you our story; We came from the ark...”  
“No I mean something else: When Clarke took me hostage, she had a cut on her arm. A normal human would have bled out, by the time it took us, to get to the elevator, but when she let go of me, I had no drop of blood on my cloth. Schwartz always lies down, beneath his bunk-bed, and when he does, it’s impossible to make him out. The first few times, I thought, I was just imagining things, but it happens all the time.”  
“Are there no cameras here?”  
“That’s why I brought you here.”  
On Jasper’s sign, Schwartz, turned a small area black. Maya stared, while Jasper explained: “Some of those, that survived the radiation, changed. If you ever read those old x-men comics, that’s what happened. The higher the radiation, the more likely, there are mutants. The outsiders, have a few mutants to, but much less. I think, that they never used them in sight of your people. If your people knew about the mutations, they would have given us suppressants. Clarke, told us early on, to not show off our abilities to the grounders, so we still have the element of surprise, when we use them.”  
“So you guys have superpowers?”  
“Not all of us. And some mutations are useless. Schwartz is probably the best we have right now.”  
They were standing now next to the pillar, through which the antenna ran. Miller had guessed, why Maya had dragged the cart with them, opened the garbage-bag and retrieved a hammer.  
Aiming at the wall, he said: “That should work.”  
Before he could hit the wall, Maya stopped him: “That will be heard everywhere!”  
“So you want us to give up and bleed to death?”  
“I want you, to wait thirty seconds.”  
“What will happen in thirty seconds?”  
“Miller will realize, what an asshole he is.”, Jasper guessed.  
When the repetitive alarm-tone sounded, Maya stepped aside to let Miller do his thing.  
The wall was hollow, after a few seconds, the hole in the wall was big enough, to work with.  
They just dumped the debris down the shaft, the had just uncovered. Monty got to work with the radio. He made it replay a recorded message, stating, what Clarke probably already told their parents. When trying, to listen for an answer, he found a problem.  
“I remember, what I wanted to tell you, before I was captured: I was checking different channels, and found out, that the interference got weaker, when shielding away from the Mountain.”  
“So?”  
“They´re blocking everything, they are not using. Nobody can hear us, unless I go to the source, and switch it off”  
Then they heard someone coming in. They quickly covered up the hole in the wall, by putting a table in front of it and leaning a picture against the wall. It didn’t look to suspicious, so Miller, Monty and Schwartz got between the shelves and hid in the darkness.  
When the guard shouted: “I can hear you!”, Jasper decided against hiding. He grabbed Maya’s hand and pulled her into a kiss. The guard shone a flashlight at them and sounded apologetic, when he said: “This room is a restricted area. You have to leave!” The others had already reached the door, when the guard had talked to them, so there were no problems in sight.

Monty decided, to take action right away, when he knew, what needed to be done.  
Dressed in one of the hazard-suits pushing a cleaning cart to the door of the control-room.  
He pointed to the cart, when the guard at the door locked at him.  
“It’s time again.”  
“Really? That’s the second time this month.”  
“Yeah, I think someone was here like a week ago, but I think it’s worth it, so … “  
The man shrugged, opened the door and called in: “Decontamination!”  
“I will hurry up.”, Monty said as he entered the room, pulling the cart behind himself.

Inside, he pulled the hood of and sat down. He quickly found the right terminal and couldn’t believe his luck: The computer wasn’t locked, so he could immediately access the program, responsible for the jamming-signal. Knowing the frequencies of the ark-channel by heart, it was easy to exclude them from the signal. He was about, to bring the terminal back to the state, he had found it in, when he reconsidered: They would likely find out, that he had been an illegal intruder. When they did, they would check their system for signs of sabotage, find the altered jamming-signal and change it back. He opened some surveillance records from outside of Mt. Weather, then brought the terminal back to sleep-mode. If they checked now, they would come to the conclusion, that he had wanted to find out about his parents.  
He put the hood back on and pushed the cart out of the room. No second to early, as there was one of the high-ranking guards, together with an unfamiliar man in front of the door, asking the guard, why he was not on his post.  
“All clear.” Monty declared, made a shy salute and went to leave.  
He was close to the next corner, when the high-ranking guard from before called him back.  
“You forgot to make your entry into the log!”  
“Really? Thank you. Please don’t tell my boss, I forget all the time.” Monty wasn’t faking his nervousness.  
He took the log. It consisted of an unlabeled table. The first column was the room, he could copy that down, the next was the date, easy enough. The last one was a problem: all the entries were a just three letters. He looked over it and copied the combination, that was the most common.  
He handed the log back and turned to leave, when the guard spoke again:  
“So everything clean now?”  
“Yes.”, it was nearly a question.  
“Why did you wrote 'scheduling continue for finalization'?”  
So that’s what “S.C.F” stood for. Monty couldn’t come up with a believable excuse, so he tried running.  
The guard was faster.

Two days have gone by, since Monty had vanished. They had been able to make contact with Raven, but that wasn’t exactly helpful, because all she could tell them, was what they already knew: Clarke did her best, to get them out and prevent the grounders from killing their parents while doing so. The negotiations seemed to be going better, than the ones with Anya.  
Jasper was making Maya nervous.  
“Nobody knows, where Harper and Monty are.”  
“We both know where they are.”  
“I checked the harvest-chamber thrice already. It’ll be suspicious, if I go there to often.”  
“Look again! Monty is all I got in terms of family.”  
“Okay. You have to keep on pretending, everything was alright. Don’t do anything stupid, while I’m gone” She kissed him goodbye and stood up.  
“Everything is fine.” Jasper said to himself, as Maya left.  
“Everything is fine.”, Jasper repeated like a mantra, until Maya was out of sight.  
“Nothing is fine. Time to do something stupid.”

Since pretending didn’t work, it was time for a more straight on approach. He visited president Wallace in his office.  
“Jasper! What brings you here?”  
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m worried about two of my friends.”  
“Why so?”  
“I haven’t seen my best friend Monty since two days. Harper even longer.”  
“I’m sure …” The sound-proof door to the office was closed.  
Jasper drew the officer’s rapier, he had noticed during his break-in, and held it at the throat of the president.  
“Do I look desperate to you? Because I am!”  
“Jasper,”, the man began, than he had grabbed the rapier.  
“this is not a toy.” he sheathed the rapier again.  
“We took you and your friends in, to integrate your ability to withstand the radiation in our gen-pool. Dr. Lorelei Tsing approached me a few weeks ago, stating, that with a bonemarrow-treatment, we could go to the surface within the next month. Since that would require you and your friends to give a lethal amount of your bonemarrow, I forbid her further experiments.”  
He pressed a button to call his guards in.  
“I suggest we pay a visit to Dr. Tsing. Find out where my son currently is.”

They found the woman in a room with 47 cages. Two of them filled with Monty and Harper. Harper’s look made it evident, that The doctor had not kept the president’s orders.  
Dante Wallace was furious: “Jasper, I want you to tell your friends, to pack their things. You’re going to go back to your parents. If you still wish to, you can still come back then.”  
Jasper, Monty and Harper made their way to the dormitory, while Dante went to arrest his son.  
From there it went downhill.


	26. A truce

Clarke was arguing with Jaha, about leaving the camp. Like all of the people, who knew one of the 100, she refused to go. Her mother backed her up.  
“I am the Chancellor! Arrest Abigail Griffin!” None of the guards moved.  
“Arrest Thelonius Jaha.” This time, the guards reacted.  
It was the last day of the Commander’s deadline.  
Then Octavia came to Clarke: “Clarke, you have to come to the dropship, right now!”  
“What?”  
“I have no time to explain. Grab your medical equipment and follow me.”  
Clarke had not seen Octavia since she and Bellamy had departed to blow up Mt. Weather's radio-tower. She assumed that something had to be up with Bellamy.

At the dropship, she found Lincoln, held in place with straps, like the last time he had been brought here. This time, he was not calmly staring, but threw himself raging at the bounds.  
Bellamy stood before him, with a shock-stick in his hand, ready to hit him, in case he broke free.  
“What is going on here?”  
“We found him in a garage. He’s a reaper. Can you turn him back?”  
“What happened to his leg?”  
“I shoot him. Can you help him?”  
“I think, the Mountain-men use some kind of drug, to make them compliant. If I get out his system, he might go back to normal. It’s only a guess though.”  
“Better than nothing.”  
Lincoln managed to break his arm free, but with his upper body bare, Clarke could use her power to subdue him. The bound him to the floor, because this way, they could apply CPR if needed and holding him still, to use medication would be easier.  
Without time, to close the wound on his leg, Clarke had to send Octavia, to get water.  
She returned with a grounder. “This is Nyko, he’s a healer and a friend of Lincoln's.”  
“I came here, to warn you, that the Commander will attack soon.”  
Lincoln had a seizure. “Can you help him? Please”, Octavia begged.  
He got a vial and held it over Lincoln's mouth. “Jo gonplei ste odon.”  
Clarke held his hand back, recognizing the words: “Is that poison? 'Jo gonplei ste odon.', that's what you say, when someone dies!”  
Bellamy hit the grounder with the shock-stick on a low setting and pulled him away.  
“You can't save him!”, he said, while Bellamy threatened him with his gun.  
Lincoln stopped breathing and Nyko looked pained, obviously he had seen it coming.  
Before Clarke could use her ability, Octavia already pumped at his chest and then forced air into his lungs. In the middle of the second repetition, Lincoln started screaming and thrashing against the bonds again.  
Nyko was awestruck: “He was dead!”  
“You tried to bring them back before, and they always stopped breathing!”, Clarke recognized.  
“Octavia, Nyko, keep him alive. I will get my mother here. She can help him better than I can.”

She ran back to Camp Jaha. “Mum, you have to go to the dropship as fast as possible. Don't take guards with you, just your equipment.”  
“What? There is an army of grounders, that will attack at any moment!”  
“Because we had nothing to offer them, but now we have! Octavia can explain everything. Go! I will talk to the Commander.”  
Abby left and Clarke walked towards the torches of the grounder-camp.

Clarke didn't know, why the grounders let her pass unhindered through the whole camp, but she reached the Commander's tent quickly.  
“I wish to see the Commander.”, she told the guard.  
“If you look at her the wrong way, I will have your head.”, was the answer. According to Jaha's description, it was the same man, that had pretended to be the Commander, when he and Kane had been imprisoned.  
Clarke nodded. What should she say? “I expect nothing different.”?  
She entered. She looked in the green eyes of a young woman, about her age, maybe two years older, with brown hair, a neutral expression and warpaint in her face. Her clothes were different, than those of the other grounders, she had seen so far. She wore a shoulder-guard, that must have been made from a big tire. It looked oddly big on her. Her armor was not made of leather, like the ones the other grounders wore, but instead it was a patchwork of rubber, leather and metal plates. At her collar and her sleeves, there could be seen fabric from the clothes, she was wearing beneath her armor. She was twirling a dagger with one hand.  
“So you are the one, that burned 300 of my warriors alive.”  
“You are the one, who sent them to kill me.”, Clarke decided to show strength.  
A woman next to her, that fitted Octavia's description of the chieftess of TonDC, spoke up in Trigedasleng, the native language of the grounders.  
The Commander cut her short with a gesture.  
“Why have you come before me?”  
“I wish to ally with you against the Mountain. I was abducted by them, and they still have my friends. I saw, what they do to your people and escaped with the help of Anya.”  
“She lies! No one escapes the Mountain!”, Indra shouted in English. Another gesture from the Commander.  
“Where is Anya now?”  
“She refused to wait at our Camp, to let her injuries heal and went to see you. She had a bullet in her hip. That she is not with you means, that she is dead. She gave me this, I think she would have wanted you to have it.”, Clarke confessed and handed Lexa, the strand of Anya's hair.  
“I made a decision, when Marcus Kane was willing to kill himself. Why should I reconsider?”  
“Without us, you will not be able to free your people from the Mountain.”  
“We assume those taken by the Mountain dead.”  
“I was not finished: The Mountain turns your warriors into reapers. We can change them back.”  
“Lies!”, Indra screamed. Clarke guessed, that someone she loved had been turned into a reaper.  
“That is a bold statement. Do you have any proof.”  
“We captured Lincoln. He is in my mother's care.”  
“Bring us to him.”

Clarke hoped, that she had not underestimated the task of keeping Lincoln alive through his withdrawal. She, Lexa, Indra and the bodyguard with the ridiculously huge sword came to the dropship.  
They entered the top-level. Nyko was still in one corner, watching in awe, Octavia held Lincoln's hand, Bellamy stood with his gun next to the hatch and Abby was kneeling next to Lincoln.

Lincoln was apparently dead. Clarke knelt next to him, to find out, why her mother wasn't doing CPR: he had passed the point, where that could bring him back, barely any signals passing through his neurons, she could amplify using her gift.  
Indra and the bodyguard drew their swords, Bellamy pointed his gun at the Commander, she drew her sword, Octavia drew her sword and Abby picked up the shock-stick.  
She turned up the power and pressed it at Lincoln's chest, which caused him to seize.  
Clarke grabbed his head, it would be painful: “Again!”  
Abby used the shock-stick as a defibrillator again, and Clarke did her best, to send the electricity the right ways. After a few seconds, Lincoln started drawing breath heavily and Clarke let go of his head. He was panting and looked around, not screaming.  
“Octavia!”  
She turned around and knelt next to him, dropping her sword.  
Lexa sheathed her sword again and the others followed.  
They climbed down the ladder.  
“You were right. Now there remains only one thing, for the truce to take effect.”  
“Anything!”, Clarke said tiredly. Right now she would agree to hand herself over as a hostage.  
“Give us the one you call Finn. The peace begins with his death.”  
Luckily, Lexa did not seem to expect an answer, because she turned to go back right away.


	27. Spacewalker

Finn was not surprised by the news, that came with Clarke, Bellamy, Octavia, Lincoln and Chancellor Griffin. He had already thought about surrendering himself to the grounders, when Jaha had come back. The main reasons he didn't, were Raven and Clarke. He loved both women, the latter more, and they both didn't want him to die. Raven had been especially fierce. She might have told Clarke and others, about them growing up together and him practically being her family. But she surely never told anybody, why he was Spacewalker.

It had been her birthday-present: a small metal-pendant, that looked like a bird. Raven had worn it to her exam, to become a Zero-G-Mechanic.  
She had scored the first perfect score since introduction of the test. But she wouldn’t be able to fulfill her dream: In the medical exam, they had found a risk, the standard protocol wouldn’t take.  
According to the doctor, it was highly likely, to never show.  
Finn decided to give her another birthday-present. He “lend” a spacesuit and lead Raven to an empty airlock.  
“There are repairs scheduled. No one will notice an open airlock in this section. Ready for your first spacewalk?”  
Raven loved the feeling of weightlessness, which was, why she was naked in her room all the time.  
When she pushed herself out of the airlock, she had the greatest feeling of freedom, she could imagine: not locked in a tiny chamber, surrounded to all sides by void, only the hose, to connect her to the ark.  
She got back in, but there was a problem: somehow, the outer door had not closed properly so the inner door wouldn’t open. With the hose already disconnected, she had only a few seconds, to instruct Finn, to use the manual override, to open the door by force.  
It was hard, walking against the airstream leaving the ark, but she got in and closed the door.  
“Get out of the suit!”, Finn instructed her over the sound of the alarm the manual override had activated.  
“What?”  
“You are already 18, they'll float you. I'm not of age yet. They will throw me into the sky-box and revise my case again at my birthday. I have a chance.”  
And so, Finn was found wearing the pants of a spacesuit and asked the guards: “Am I in trouble now?”

In his eyes, and the eyes of most of Camp Jaha he was responsible for the loss of three month worth of air as well as the death of 18 grounders. Those, who didn't want to hand over Finn were a clear minority, when Marcus Kane arrived.  
“Where have you been?”  
“I was with the Commander. I couldn’t leave, but in every other way, I was a guest.”  
“Then why did they let you go now?”  
Clarke, Abigail and Kane were standing around Lincoln, who was almost back to his old strength.  
“I think it was, to convince you, that giving up Finn, was the best course of action.”  
“He took 18 lives, that would normally call for 18 lives. Indra probably wants all of you dead. But Heda only demands one.”, Lincoln agreed.  
“But we can't just let them kill him! He was out there looking for me!”  
“I spent a lot of time with Lexa. She's a visionary. She might agree, that we put him up for a trial.”, Marcus proposed.  
“Lexa might want to, but the Commander can't accept that, she would be killed.”  
“Your people would kill their own Commander for showing mercy.”  
“They would kill her for showing weakness. If death has no price, than live has no worth. That is our way.”

Clarke spoke to Raven and Bellamy.  
“There is no way, that my mother can help Finn against the grounders. Camp Jaha would be eradicated. The only way for him to survive, would be for him to run away.”, she summarized, the discussion.  
“Okay, I can make sure, that we can get through the fence. I say we tell, whoever we can trust and meet at the backside of the camp at sunset. From there we split up and meet three hours later at the dropship.”

Bellamy had brought Octavia and a few guns, Raven had brought Murphy, Clarke was with Finn.  
The engineer, Raven was working with switched of the fence and they slipped through.

Clarke headed for the bunker, Finn had shown her, to rest and hide there, before they would meet at the dropship. Finn was following, leaving traces.  
They climbed down and Clarke was meet with the smell of the dead plunderer. They left the hatch open. They were taciturn and stayed close to the entrance.  
The grounders had not found them yet, when it was time to leave.  
At the dropship, they reunited with Raven, Murphy, Bellamy and Octavia. They planned their travel to the person called Luna, Lincoln had told them to look for, before the dropship had been attacked.  
Then they saw the movement between the trees. The grounders had found them.  
Raven was adamant: “We are not giving Finn up.”  
“But do we do? There are to many.”  
“They want a murderer, we give them one.”, she said and pointed her gun at Murphy.  
“He was seen in the village as well, he resembles him.”  
“So that's why you asked me to help you? You had planned this? And still I'm the asshole.”  
Clarke was shocked. She had wondered before, why Murphy had joined them.  
She had lashed out at him earlier, because he had not stopped Finn. His reply had been: “If you want to blame someone other than Finn, how about the person he was looking for in that village? If I had shot him, we might not be in this situation, but than everybody would want my head.”  
She had not expected Raven, to force Murphy to take his fall.

It was Finn that stopped Raven.  
“We won't get out of this, when we go at each others throats. Octavia, you guard the hole in the upper level, Raven, you stay at the entrance and take cover behind the ramp, Clarke and Bellamy, you get in the remnants of our gunner-tunnels.”  
They got into their positions, nervously watching the movement between the parts of the wall and the trees.  
Suddenly Finn was there, standing straight in the open, his gun held above his head, walking slowly out of the former camp.  
“What is he doing?”, Clarke hissed in Bellamy's direction, already knowing the answer.  
“He's surrendering.”  
Finn dropped the gun, when he passed between them, and walked a few meters further. To give him cover-fire Clarke and Bellamy would have to leave their own cover.  
He was grabbed and taken away.

Clarke visited Lincoln, whom Abby still hadn't allowed to leave the bed.  
“What will happen now to him?”  
“He killed 18, he will feel the pain of 18 deaths.”  
“What will they do.”  
“Everybody relative or befriended to the dead, will get their turn. First they will use fire. If Finn is still alive, when they finished, Heda will end it with her sword through his heart.”

At the fence, she could see the grounders prepare a stake, to burn Finn's flesh. Raven was in tears and heard Clarke whisper: “They can't do that to him.”  
“Talk to the Commander, she listened to you before!”  
“I will try.”, Clarke said, but she knew, that there was no way, Finn would see the next day.  
“Give me your arm.” Raven hid a shiv in Clarke's sleeve.  
“If you can't convince her, stab the bitch. In the chaos, you can free Finn and get him back to the camp.”  
Clarke nodded, as she heard the apparently delirious girl. If she tried to kill the Commander, she would die within the next three seconds.

She walked towards the Commander's tent. Indra was blocking her path. When Clarke came closer, she lowered her spear, to point at Clarke's stomach.  
“Let me go to Lexa!”  
“Leave this place, sky-girl!”  
Clarke leaned into the spear, until a red stain spread over her shirt.  
“I will not leave, without talking to the Commander.”  
Lexa emerged from her tent.  
“You are bleeding in vain, Clarke of the sky-people. You cannot stop this.”, She said gesturing to the stake, where Finn was chained.  
“No, only you can do that. Show my people, that you can be merciful, show them your power, show them, that you are no the monsters, they think you are!”  
Lexa had to stop herself from frowning in confusion. After Clarke had made her witness Lincoln's curing, she had not expected her to do so badly at convincing her. Why would she risk the trust of her own people, to gain the trust of the sky-people?  
“Blood must have blood, Clarke. That is our way, and there is nothing to be done about it.”  
“Take me! I burned 300 of your warriors alive. He killed those villagers looking for me. ”  
“Than he will die for you.”  
“Can I at least say my last goodbye to him?”  
“Go ahead.”

Clarke approached Finn.  
“I’m sorry.”, she whispered in his ear, when one of her fingers touched his neck.  
The stab-wound in his chest was only, so the grounders knew, that Finn was dead.  
Clarke dropped the bloody knife.  
Indra stormed forward. Like many other warriors, she felt, that Clarke had cheated them of their justice. Lexa stopped them.  
“Enough! What Clarke did will follow her. The murderer will now burn with his victims.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, till somewhere in season three, i will more or less follow the show, but Lexa beeing dead is unacceptable!


	28. Funeral

Returning to Camp Jaha was agonizing. Raven had not blamed Clarke for her loss before, but with Finn having died through her hands, she did.  
She told Raven, her mother and Kane, that Finn would be burned together with the villagers he had killed.  
Since she was viewed as the leader of the skaikru by the grounders, attendance to the ceremony was mandatory for her.  
Kane, and her mother joined as political support, Bellamy, Octavia and Lincoln followed Clarke, a few guards would accompany them for safety and Raven wouldn’t leave Finn’s side.  
Raven had the radio as well as some parts with her, in case they could catch an important transmission from the mountain-men or Jasper would try to contact them.

They were not even halfway to TonDC when Clarke saw him for the first time. It was different, than her hallucinations of her father, when she had eaten the nuts.  
He was not clear, but she saw him in shapes between the trees, in men passing by her and in the darkness, when she closed her eyes.  
“Go away!”, she order the boy, she knew was not there.  
He smiled and turned away, but a little later she was walking behind the cart that carried his body.

They camped for the night, and the mood dropped further. When Octavia and Lincoln moved, to sleep next to the other warriors, they were more friendly to her, than to him, calling him a traitor or reaper. They were forced to sleep between the arkers.  
Clarke chose to place her bedroll between the campsites. Bellamy had planned, to sneak into the Mountain. Clarke had forbidden him to go, when he had proposed the plan to her, saying, that she couldn’t lose him as well.  
When she wanted to lie down, he called her, to sleep closer to him, because it was not safe.  
If it was not safe, they had more problems, than getting sleep.

The arrival in TonDC was hostile. They were searched for weapons. Raven got in an argument over the radio and the parts.   
Most of the remaining villagers blamed all the arkers for Finns doing. When an elderly man, who had lost his hole family, attacked Clarke, Gustus, Lexa’s giant bodyguard, beat him to pulp. Clarke made Lexa stop him, because she would be blamed for his death.  
While the pyre was erected, Raven brought news: Jasper had found out, what Clarke already knew, with the help of Maya. They were playing for time by donating blood, but Harper was already missing.  
Without help from outside, there was not much they could do.

It was time for the ceremony. Clarke kept staring at Finn’s face, as she saw him staring back.  
“In death we unite the murderer and the victims. Through the fire we remove the burdens of the past.”  
She held the torch over to Clarke, so she would light the pyre.  
Clarke lowered the torch, saying the words, she had heard more often, than she liked: “Jo gonplei ste odon.”  
She tried her best, to keep a neutral expression, but Lexa must have seen through it.  
When Clarke had turned her back to the fire, she was standing next to her.  
“I lost someone special to me, too. Her name was Costia. The ice-nation took her and tortured her, because she was mine and they thought she knew my secrets. Then they beheaded her, and presented me her head. I thought, I’d never get over the pain. But I did.”  
“How?”  
“By recognizing it for what it was: Weakness.”  
“What is? Love?”  
“Yes.”  
“So you just stopped caring? I will never do that.”  
“Than you endanger yourself and everybody you love.” Lexa left her alone with Finn.

She joined the others for the feast. Kane handed over a flask to Lexa.  
“This is given to special occasions. I think this qualifies. Just don’t drink to much at once.”, he said with a smile.  
Glasses were filled and handed out to Clarke and Lexa.  
“To those we lost.” Clarke raised her glass.  
“And to those we will soon find again.” Lexa raised her glass.  
Before the could drink, Gustus interrupted, to test Lexa’s glass.  
He handed it back and she raised it again.  
Just as the two young women wanted to drink, he fell over. Bellamy reacted, by punching the glass from her hand.  
“Sky-kru tried to poison Heda!”, the accusation was shouted out before a healer was called to Gustus.  
The delegation was rounded up and searched again.  
They found a small package, with traces of a white powder in one of Ravens pockets.  
“He put it there, when he searched me!” shouted Raven pointing at Gustus.  
Lexa looked angry, but spoke calmly: “Sky-kru will stay locked up here, until either a judgment is passed or Raven’s innocence is proven.” She left. Lincoln was left with them.

“Raven, I have to know: Did you try to poison the Commander?”  
The answer was a slap.  
“A few hours ago, you wanted me to stab her.”  
“I said, I’m innocent. If I wanted to kill her, you would notice.”  
“Lincoln, who would want the Commander or us dead.”  
“No Tree-kru would try to kill the Commander, without a challenge first. Lexa herself made it possible to do so openly and nobody would risk the live of the Commander to kill a few of you.”  
Indra entered together with Gustus and a few more warriors. The poison must not have been to strong.  
They took Raven.  
“Wait, she’s innocent!”  
“I asked the Commander, to kill you all. Instead only she will suffer the death by a thousand cuts. You are free to go. The allegiance will end with her live. I suggest you run.”  
They left them standing with the door open.  
“The Commander was not the target!”, Clarke exclaimed.

She stormed out.  
“Nyko, do you still have the bottle, Kane gave the Commander?”  
“Yes.”  
“Bring it here, quickly!”  
Nyko was confused by the request, but after witnessing Lincoln's recovery, he trusted the sky-girl.  
Raven was already chained up and Indra ran a knife along her arm.  
“Commander, you have to stop this!”  
“On what ground do you demand this, Clarke?”  
“She is innocent! I can prove it.”  
She took the bottle from Nyko and took a few gulps.  
Lexa held her hand up, to stop Raven's punishment. “Explain!”  
“The poison was not in the bottle, it was in the cup.”  
“So who was culprit?”  
“Him.”, Bellamy pointed at Gustus, putting the pieces together.  
“Gustus would never try to kill me!”  
“You were not the target, the allegiance was.”, Clarke explained.  
“You were accused. Speak true!”  
“The alliance would have been your death.”  
“And now your treachery is yours.”  
Raven, Clarke and Lexa stayed the hole time, while every member of tree-kru cut the large man. Clarke was mainly watching Lexa, whose expression remained stoic the hole time.  
It stayed stoic, when she drew her sword and held it to his chest.  
It stayed stoic, when he told her, to stay strong.  
It stayed stoic, when she pushed.  
It stayed stoic, when he died.  
Clarke could see, how much she had cared for the man.

She stared at him.  
“Love is weakness.”  
Finn’s ghost left. She allowed Bellamy, to infiltrate the Mountain with the help of Lincoln disguising as a reaper.  
The next ghost surprised her.  
It was Anya. Why of all the grounders, she saw one of the few, whose live she had saved, escaped her mind.


	29. Second

“You sound, like you meet the flame-keeper.” Maybe it was not a ghost.  
“Are you really here? Now? I could have used your help during the negotiations.”  
“I just got here. My hip slowed me down.”  
“I get, that it's hard, to walk with a bullet in your hip, but how come, that you came not this way?”, Clarke pointed towards Camp Jaha.  
“I headed straight to Polis when I woke up. I did trust you, but I didn't trust your people, to not imprison me. When I reached Polis, I was informed, that Heda had left with an army.”  
“Please tell me, you stopped in Polis, to let someone care for your wound!”  
“I couldn’t afford the time to rest.”

Clarke and Abby extracted the bullet right there from her hipbone.  
Lexa's face was stoic, when she saw her presumed dead first alive again, but there were bad news: Because Anya had walked, the bullet had destroyed a lot of tissue. Through some kind of miracle, she had not died of a blood-poisoning or internal bleeding, but because the wounds were now multiple days old, Dr. Griffin’s ability couldn’t restore it to full health anymore. Anya would never run again, only fight standing and riding a horse would become painful quickly.  
Her days as a warrior were over. She could help train others at best.  
“It pains me, that Lexa won't comment on my impatience, after I lectured her about hers, when she was my second, for years.”, Anya said, when she heard the diagnosis.  
She chose to stay with the army and travel back to Polis, after the war was won.

The army was split into two, with one part camping close to TonDC and the other villages around the Mountain and the other part camping close to Camp Jaha, to train with them and get to know the future allies. Indra lead that group. Anya had offered to, but her physical state, would not allow her, to lead an attack if necessary, so she just helped in the training, by pairing up sparring partners and giving advise.  
When a warrior challenged her, calling her weak, she demonstrated her skill: without moving her hips or drawing a weapon, she beat up the man, that was about twice her weight, without stopping her comments on the flaws in his technique. Kane and Octavia stared in awe.   
“It's fascinating: What doesn't kill them, only makes them stronger.”  
“Get smacked down, stand back again.”, Octavia repeated the phrase Lincoln had taught her in trigedasleng.

Kane had the guards put up a few posts with increasing distance in five meter steps. Three guards at a time stood at a line, aiming at one of the posts and shooting.   
One of the warriors showed interest. Kane demonstrated.  
“Press it against your shoulder firmly. They buck a lot when you fire them, you need to use your whole body to steady it after the first shoot. Aim through the scope, but don't press your eye against it.”  
He pressed the trigger three times. From the 80 meter, the 85 meter and the 90 meter marks flew splinters. He looked over to the grounder.  
“Do you want to try?”  
When the man gave no sign of rejection, Kane went to hand him the rifle. Before the grounder could take it, he got verbally disciplined by Indra.  
“It's fine, I offered it to him.”  
“They believe, if someone laid hands on a gun, the Mountain would eradicate their whole village.”, Octavia explained.  
“You wouldn’t want your cattle to fight back. We know so little about them. Octavia, I have a request.”  
“What do you want?”  
“I want you to familiarize with them, get to know them, so we know, before they attack us.”  
“You want me to spy.”  
“No. I just think, that once the common enemy is slain, they might get hostile again. If that's the case, I would like to know in time. But if we become friends before that, the peace might be permanent.”  
Indra called her warriors together for a hunt, mocking the sky-kru for their lack of food.  
Octavia stood up and blocked her way.  
“I want to fight!”  
“Go out of my way sky-girl!”  
“I saved your live.”  
“And now I'm saving yours. Get out of my way.”  
“Make me!”  
“Fio!”, Indra called one of her warriors.  
The others formed a circle around the two.  
Octavia drew her sword. It was not much of a fight. Even if his technique didn't have a bit of the expertise Indra or Anya had showed, his movements were faster and much more powerful then Octavia's. She soon was disarmed and knocked to the ground.  
When he turned his back, she stood up.  
“Is that all you got?”  
“Teach the brat a lesson.”, Indra barked.  
He grinned, put his sword away, and approached Octavia again. She tried to kick him, to prevent a fistfight, but his reflexes were quick. He caught her leg, stepped closer, hit her in the face and let go of the leg at the same time, causing her to fall again.  
Again she stood up, raising her arms in challenge.  
He delivered a few punches to her stomach, face and chest until she fell again.  
She stood up again.  
After some time Indra called him back: “Even a fool knows, when she had enough.”

When they returned from their hunt, Fio mocked her: “The boar put up a better fight then you did.”  
After they had eaten, Abby wanted her to go to the sick-bay, to get taken care of her wounds. Nothing was broken, but the bruises would be visible for some time and she had a split lip.  
Indra came in.  
“Today, you fought like a child. Your blows were slow, weak and sloppy, your defense was useless and you lacked technique.”  
“I know, I got my ass beaten. Do you want to tell me something?”  
“All your flaws can be fixed with training, but you showed something, that not everybody possesses. You have a strong will, stubbornness if you want. I have an offer for you: You can become my second. I will teach all I know and you will learn. When you accept, you are bound to my command, do you understand?”  
“I'm in, but why do you do that? What do get out of it?”  
“Lesson one: Do not question me!”  
“Okay, boss.”  
“Lesson two: You either address me as 'first', my name, or my rank!”  
“Okay, Indra.”


	30. Skirmish

In TonDC Clarke was fighting a different fight. The generals had assembled and were discussing the strategy. Clarke's plan, to wait for Bellamy to open the doors from the inside, was not liked.  
“We have the biggest army. I say we use it!”, Quint said.  
“With the acid-fog still intact, we would just send the army to die.”, Clarke answered, what felt like the hundredth time.  
“Even if we reached the door, we wouldn’t get in.”, Clarke said.  
“Waiting for your friend to open it, is not a strategy, it's prayer!”, he countered.  
“Enough!”, the Commander shut down the debate, that was about to break out.  
“We will make a break and continue the meeting in a half an hour.”

Clarke was accompanied by Mayor Byrne as security, but she didn't want to be around anybody, who had to do with military, so she took a walk outside of the village.

Suddenly an arrow flew narrowly past her head. Quint had found her and decided to hunt her down.  
Clarke drew her handgun and fired two shots, to make him take cover, so she could get some distance.  
She was relieved, to see Mayor Byrne's blonde hair, until she saw, that the body was missing; the head was lying in a tree-fork.  
Then Quint was over her with a dagger in his hand, the other holding her hands together with the gun in place.  
“You burned my brother alive!”  
“He tried to kill me.”  
He raised his weapon and suddenly there was another blade in his hand: a thrown knife had pierced through the base of his thumb and was now stuck parallel to the grip of his dagger.  
Lexa and two guards, one carrying the absurdly large sword, Gustus had carried before, were there.  
“I had said so already: Attack her and you attack me!”  
“Thank you! He killed Byrne and tried kill me.”  
“Lies, you were my only victim!”, Quint said, denying, that he had killed the sky-kru guard.  
“His live is yours to take.”, Lexa stated, pulling the knife from Quint's hand and giving it to Clarke.  
Clarke hesitated to kill the defenseless prisoner, but before she could come up with something to say, a loud roar was heard, coming from the direction of the village.  
Lexa took the knife back and pushed it into Quint's leg. She lead the group away from TonDC and the roar.  
After a short time, the roar could be heard again, closer this time.  
“Get her to safety!”, Lexa ordered her guards, taking the giant sword from her bodyguard.  
Before Clarke turned to run away further, she could see Lexa's eyes and lips turn black.

Clarke and the two guards ran through the forest for a few meters, when Clarke saw the end of an old drain. Whatever was following them wouldn’t be able to follow them here, so Clarke ripped the rusty bars away and crawled in.  
She followed the drain, hoping that she could stand up again.  
She reached the end: it was a concrete ditch. She stood beneath the fence of a zoo-enclosure. She looked up, to see a large, dark, humanoid shape fly in.  
“Heda!”, shouted one of the guards.  
They climbed a tree, that had fallen into the ditch, to get to Lexa. From their higher position, they could see, where they were: bones and carrion showed, that they were in the feeding grounds of the beast. They just wanted to pull up the other guard, when it appeared: A gorilla, standing on all fours, it was about three meters high. It had a fresh wound on the left arm, but appeared only angered by the cut, Lexa must have given it.  
It jumped, pretty much landing on the one guard, then it got up to their level. The other guard stormed forward, to buy them time, but was swept away. The beast was looking at Lexa, apparently recognizing her. Clarke wasted no time and shot six times at the gorilla, four into its chest and two at its skull. The head-shots caused it to fall backwards into the ditch.  
They got deeper into the enclosure. It had been built for an animal half the size of the monster, that followed them now.  
They came to a dead end, before them was another ditch. Clarke jumped down and saw an entrance, with a heavy door. Lexa followed her, on her heels the gorilla. Lexa reached the door and Clarke wanted to pull it closed, when her foot was grabbed by the beast.  
Clarke used her gun again: one in the arm and when it didn't let go, two in the head. The last one hit its eye.  
Clarke pulled the door closed behind Lexa and bolted it with her sword. The beast raged around to find another entrance or to handle the pain.  
For now they were save: The metal door was the only entrance to the small concrete chamber.  
“What you did was foolish, now two will die here, instead of one.”, Lexa said, while Clarke tended to her injuries. Her arm was sprained, from when it had thrown her into the enclosure, and her ankle was hurt, from when she had been grabbed, but she would be able to walk soon.  
“My people say 'thank you', when someone saves their live.”  
“My life is not important, but you have to lead this allegiance.”  
“You may be heartless, Lexa, but at least your smart. God help us, if one of your generals became Commander.”  
“My spirit would choose more wisely than that.”  
“What?”  
“How do you choose your leaders?”  
Clarke had no time, to think, whether Lexa was serious, because the noise of the gorilla came closer to the door. The door wouldn’t hold for ever, since it was made to contain the beast inside and not to keep it out.  
“Death is not the end. I will distract it, while you escape!”  
“Your spirit stays where it is. Stand next to the door, we let it in.”  
Lexa did as she was told and waited for Clarke to act.  
The beast charged at the door. Clarke removed the sword. Just as the gorilla would impact with the door again, she moved it open, to let it charge into the chamber.  
Lexa and Clarke exited nearly the same second and closed the door again, before the gorilla even turned around. At this side was a proper bolt.

Clarke left the enclosure the same way, it had entered it with Lexa in tow.  
After they had gotten some distance between themselves and the cage, the made a fire, because it was already getting dark.  
Clarke awoke with a shock, she had wanted, to keep guard, since Lexa was injured.  
“It's okay. You're safe.”  
Lexas voice calmed her down.  
“Your arm?”  
“Hurts.”  
Clarke stood up, kicking out the last embers.  
“We should get back to TonDC. The cage won't hold forever.”, Lexa said, getting up.  
Clarke stood still, as she was hit by a sudden brainwave: “The cage won't hold! Lexa, you already have an army in Mt. Weather. All Bellamy has to do, is open the cages and hundreds of people will fight their way out of the Mountain!”

Indra should take Quints position as general. Clarke should travel back to Camp Jaha, to tell her about her promotion and check with Raven for news from Bellamy or their plan to enter the Mountain.  
Clarke was on her way to the camp, when she was attacked. She had been riding in a slow pace, mainly because she wasn't used to riding a horse, when one of her guards slumped down and fell off his horse. Clarke let her horse make a short sprint, before she dismounted and took cover behind some bushes. When no other shot fell, she ran towards the position, she assumed the sniper to be.  
She saw one mountain-men with an arrow in his back, the sniper, and another one, the spotter, currently fighting Octavia. He was definitely trained and experienced, but restricted by his suit and with only a knife, she soon managed to cut him with her sword.  
“Try to seal the cut, I want a prisoner!”, Clarke ordered.  
The mountain-men had some kind of glue with them and so they transported the prisoner and the shot guard to Camp Jaha.  
Abby, Clarke and Jackson got to work immediately.  
“Tell Raven, make a place, where we can get him out of his suit.”, Clarke ordered, while keeping the bleeding of the grounder to a minimum.  
Abby closed his wound instantly, but they were to slow: He had already lost to much blood, without a fitting blood-donor, he died.  
That they managed, to save the prisoner, made the remaining warriors angry; They had not come, to see a warrior die, while his murderer lives.  
Raven had turned one of the airlocks into a radiation-free zone, where the wounds of the spotter could be tended. They decided to not use Abbys and Clarkes abilities.

“Carl Emerson. Mt. Weather security detail.”  
“You said so before, but we need you, to answer our questions.”, Marcus Kane said politely through the intercom at the airlock, that held Carl Emerson.  
“Carl Emerson. Mt. Weather security detail.”  
“That's all he says.”, Clarke noted, when the intercom was switched of.  
“He won't talk so I will check the radio.”  
Even if the soldier wouldn’t say anything but his name, they managed to get some valuable intelligence from him: He carried one of the devices, Clarke had seen the mountain-men use to keep the reapers at bay. Raven would build similar ones. Key-card and map were useless, but the fact, that neither of them had a radio with them meant, that they knew, that Raven could listen into their external communication.  
When her daughter was gone, chancellor Griffin got closer to the controls.  
“If I push this button, he will talk.”  
“No, Abby! We will not torture someone for information!”, Marcus said, getting in her way.  
“He tried to kill my daughter.”  
“Abby, you have to accept, that Clarke's not your little girl anymore. They all stopped being children, when we send them down here to die. And now, Clarke is a person of authority, even to the grounders.”, Kane reasoned.  
“You want me, to trust these people with my daughter? They are lead by a child!”  
“So are we.”


	31. Exodus

Camp Jaha had changed, since Clarke had been here the last time. With the truce between the arkers and the grounders, they had found some of the stations. One of them had been Mecha-station and the plus in mechanics and engineers began already to show, as many tents were replaced by buildings. The guards carried radios with a short range, that didn't get blocked by the Mountain.  
The fence had to be taken down, to make room, for the increased population.  
Jaha had been let out of detainment.

Murphy was free, officially. In reality, he couldn’t leave the camp and had to work as a janitor. Then Thelonius Jaha came to him.  
“John Murphy, why are you here?”  
“Fuck of, Jaha! I have shelves to sort.”  
“Is that, what you want to do? Did you survive being on your own for months, to fill shelves?”  
“It's your fault, that I had to, in the first place.”  
“I remember: Your father was floated for stealing medicine, and you were arrested not much later, because you set fire to his arresting officer's apartment. But you still haven’t answered my question, so let me ask a different one: Do you want to hold a broom, or this.” Jaha held out a gun to him.  
Murphy took it and pointed it at Jaha.  
“Tell me, why I shouldn’t pull the trigger. I already am a murderer.”  
“You wouldn’t find out, why I gave it to you.”  
“So?”  
“I want to visit my sons' grave.”  
“So what? If you need a guide, half the camp knows the way to the dropship.”  
“I heard, that the graves are unmarked, so only one of the hundred can tell me, which is my sons'.”  
“You can get me out of camp?”  
“As a former chancellor, I still have a certain pull. What do you say?”  
“Fine.”

It was darkening, when the two reached the dropship. Murphy pointed at one of the crosses, that had been erected outside the walls.  
“That's his, and these two are the guys, who hanged me for his murderer.”  
“What?”  
“So nobody told you. Your son was not killed by grounders, he was murdered. The murderer was an eleven year old girl, named Charlotte. She said, she had to do it. Do you know, why? Because she couldn’t get to you. How does it feel, to doom your son twice?”  
Jaha was still, it was obvious, that Murphy had hit a nerve. After a few seconds. He got up.  
“We should stay the night here.”

The next morning, Jaha walked towards the woods.  
“Hey where are you going? Camp you is that way.”  
“I don't intend to go back to Camp Jaha. In a few month or weeks, the grounders will break the truce and attack the people there again. I will go to the City of Light, a place, where everybody is welcome. I will find it and I will lead my people there.”  
From the woods emerged a few people. None of them knew any of the children, who were in Mt. Weather right now. Two of them had guns, the others carried supplies.  
“So, what will it be John Murphy? Will you go back, to be despised as a former murderer or will you join me, to find a new home for yourself and our people?”  
Murphy thought quickly. The danger seemed equal on both paths, but Jaha was right: In Camp Jaha he would be viewed as a dangerous murderer, even though he was one of the delinquents, who handled, what they had done to survive, the best.  
“I've got nothing better to do.”


	32. Blood and Bones

“He took five guns and food-supplies for one month! We have to catch him!”, Abby was furious.  
“We can't spare the resources to search for him. An infirmary has to be prepared for when the grounders will come here with the reapers, the guards must focus on the Mountain, while bracing for the scenario, that the alliance won't hold and the mechanics and engineers are busy with turning the camp into a stable structure.”, Kane said calmly.  
“Minus Raven and Wick, who still need to find a way, to open the main gate to the Mountain from the outside, disabling the acid-fog and holding contact to our people in there.”, Clarke stated.  
Kyle Wick was one of the best engineers on the ark. Since he had been on Alpha-station, he had worked with Raven, since she had allowance to work again, after Abby had removed the bullet from her spine. Since she had started wearing the brace, he had made for her, she treated him almost friendly.  
And now her voice came through the intercom: “Clarke, get your ass here, Bellamy picked up!”

“Bellamy, I'm glad to hear from you! When Lincoln didn't return, we thought you were dead.”  
“There were problems. He got injected with the drug again. I was in the harvest-chamber. Maya saved my life.”  
“Have you meet Jasper or the others? We haven't heard of them either.”  
“That's the bad news: apparently, there was a coup against Dante Wallace, when he wanted to let them leave. His son put their room into lock-down and is now picking them out one by one.” I'm posing as guard right now, but me cover will soon blow.”  
“Okay, I make sure, they are not looking for you and you try to talk to Dante Wallace. If he wanted to let them go, he might help you.”

Clarke got to the airlock, that held the mountain-men, her grounder bodyguards in tow.  
The guard was uncertain what to do, but didn't dare to stand against the determined girl and the four bulky warriors.  
“Suit up! I will open the door in five minutes.”, Clarke told Emerson.  
After he did as he was told, he was escorted out.  
Abby ordered the gate to be closed and blocked her path.  
Indra and the other grounders saw it and took formation behind Clarke.  
When the guards lifted their guns, the grounders drew their weapons and stood right in front of them, threatening them.  
“Clarke, what are you doing?”  
“I'm releasing the prisoner. He has no more information, he could give us.”  
“No! The prisoner goes back to his cell. Indra, order your men, to stand down.”  
Indra looked at Clarke.  
“Mum, tell the guards to open the gate. You may be chancellor but I'm in charge.”  
Some of the guards had already lowered their guns, looking at the Chancellor, before she could say anything.  
Abby got out of her daughter's way, the guards opened the gate and the grounders sheathed their weapons again.  
“You will go back to the Mountain and you will bring your leader a message: I am coming for you! The acid-fog and your gate can't stop us, and thanks to you,”, she pulled out the tone-generator, “neither can the reapers. The grounder army is much bigger than you think. If he wants to survive, he has to let our people go. All our people, grounders and arkers!”  
She looked at the peak of the Mountain.  
“It's about a seven hours march from here to the Mountain, right?”  
“The suit is constricting, we need eight hours.”  
She grabbed the control of his gas-canister. She opened the valve.  
“I bet you can do it in six.”  
He looked in shock; When he realized, that she was serious, he ran.  
To Indra Clarke said: “Make sure, he reaches the Mountain!”  
The general waved and a few warriors headed out, overtaking the mountain-men quickly, to signal the rest of the grounders, not to attack him, and to make sure, that no wild animals held him back.  
“Why did you do that?”  
“Bellamy reported back. They started taking the kids. I made them look for an army, that isn't attacking, to prevent them from looking for a spy, that is freeing their prisoners and deactivating their defenses.”

Bellamy's plan to infiltrate the Mountain had not worked out as he wanted: On the way to the tunnels, he had made out the details with Lincoln and got a better feeling for the boyfriend of his sister.  
“Thank you, that you help me. It's a dangerous mission.”  
“Thank you, for trusting me with your life.”  
“You care for Octavia, as much as I do. That makes it easy for me to trust you.”  
“I hope you are aware, that my feelings for her are of a different nature, then yours.”  
Bellamy chuckled. While he still was very protective over his little sister, he had gotten used to the fact, that she had a love life.  
“I have to thank you for that as well; You made her strong.”  
“She already was strong. If she had not knocked me out, when you came, I would have killed all three of you; Jasper, Finn and you.”, Lincoln said, the last part joking. It felt good to have a lighthearted conversation, with the seriousness pressing the mood in the camps.  
“So: When we reach the door, three soldiers will come out, but they will expect you, to be receptive to the tone-generators and me to be beaten and tied up. With the element of surprise, that's easy.  
What do I have to expect after the door?”  
“When I was brought in, they first stripped me, hosed me with boiling water, then dosed me with a powder, that burns worse. After that I was sedated and woke op chained to a table, where I was injected the red.”  
Only a few meters into the tunnels, and they already had to change the plan: they ran into a group of real reapers, transporting a few grounders tied to a log.  
“Okay, when they are about to give you the red, you grab it and run. The others will go crazy, nobody will notice a grounder going in.”, Bellamy whispered, while Lincoln pretended to tie him to the log.  
In Camp Jaha, Lincoln had to listen to the tone-generators, Raven had made, to assure, that they were working. He had winced, but had been able, to stay in place, without backing away.  
But when he saw the red, he was unable, to withstand, what his body told him to do, and that was to follow the mountain-men's orders.  
When Bellamy saw, that Lincoln wouldn’t be able, to help him, he tried to run, but was hit by a tranquilizer dart.  
He woke up during the decontamination. It was as painful, as Lincoln had described it. He was put to sleep again, and was happy, to be in a cage. It meant, that he won't be turned into a reaper. With some luck, he might even get out.  
He started kicking and pushing at the door, to find weak points. A girl above him hissed something to him in trigedasleng.  
“I'm sorry, I don't understand you.”, he whispered.  
“You are sky-kru?”  
“Yes.”  
She spat at him.  
“I take it, you were captured before you could hear about the alliance.”  
“What alliance?”  
“My people can cure the reapers and one of us broke out of the Mountain, now we're working with the Commander to get the rest out.”  
The girl, her name was Echo, didn't believe him, but when his story contained elements of the life on the ground, he wouldn’t have witnessed, if he had not entered a village in peace, she stopped calling him names.  
“What were you telling me earlier?”  
“You have to keep calm, they take the lively ones first.”  
So Bellamy examined the cage calmly, while talking to Echo. He learned a lot about her clan, the Ice-nation only a few miles to the north, but he didn't find a way, to open the cage: the weakest part was the lock and that couldn’t be destroyed with bare hands.  
The good news were, that there seemed to be no cameras in the harvest-chamber. If he managed to break free, he wouldn’t be noticed, before someone saw in person.  
When the mountain-men wanted to take Echo, he tried to break free. He was sedated, placed on the table and hooked to the blood-strip.  
Luckily, it was Maya, who noticed the unusual tempo, the blood took effect on the only patient, hooked to the blood-strip. She got into the harvest-chamber and noted, that the man on the table had neither the tribal-tattoos nor the facial scars the grounders had.  
She peeled of the contacts, that read his vitals and gave him a shot to counter the sedative and wake him up.  
“Did Clarke send you?”, she whispered.  
“Maya?”, Bellamy asked.  
“Yes, how do you know?”  
“Clarke said you were honest and Jasper mentioned, he had help. I figured the rest.”  
They heard someone coming through the medical wing.  
“Quick! Lie back down!”, she ordered, then she covered him with a cloth.  
A guard entered.  
“What are you doing here, Maya?”  
“Hello Mr. Lovejoy. Have you seen the readings? Johnson was almost one hour faster, than normal. I came in here, to check, but now he's dead.” She pointed at the monitors. Without the contacts actually touching Bellamy, they all showed flat lines. She pulled at the chords.  
“Can you take his upper body?”, Maya asked, pretending, that she wanted to throw the body out.  
When he went to grab his arms, Maya 'dropped' the feet and Bellamy launched himself at the soldier. As soon as he let go of his arms, Bellamy grabbed his gun and threw it away with his left hand, with his right hand he hit his throat, to prevent him from calling out.  
Even if the soldier was not able, to shout, he soon showed to be superior to Bellamy, when he pulled out a knife.  
Maya picked up the gun and aimed it at Lovejoy.  
“Don't! They will hear!”  
Bellamy retreated and the soldier followed, knowing, that Bellamy would attack, if he turned to run.  
It was a mistake, he stood now right next to the cages, full of grounders.  
An arm came out of one of the cages and grabbed his hand. When the soldier turned to face Echo, Bellamy grabbed his throat.  
Maya stared, as she saw a man she knew being strangled.  
Bellamy looked at the girl.  
“I'm sorry, but I didn't have a choice”  
“I'm good.”, she interrupted, “When I said Jasper, that I would help him, I knew, that there would be blood. You better take his uniform, before we throw his body out.”  
Ten minutes later, they were in the elevator.  
She removed the name-tag from his chest.  
“There's not even 400 people in this mountain. Everybody can tell, you're not Lovejoy.  
Keep your face down or covered as much as you can.”

They reached the dormitory just in time, to see the doors closing. Through the porthole he could see Jasper's face.  
They headed to the radio, to report to Clarke.

Jasper had seen Bellamy and Maya, right as the doors were closed. He was not sure, what that meant. Dante Wallace had seemed sincerely furious, when he had caught Lorelei Tsing holding Monty and Harper in cages. The most logical explanation was, that arresting his son had not worked.  
After a few minutes, the doors opened, they were swarmed by soldiers and then Dr. Tsing came in. Harper started screaming, remembering, how the woman had drilled her bones without anesthetic.  
“No, not her. She has to recover.”, the doctor acknowledged her. “Take her.” She pointed at the girl next to her.  
The guards grabbed her and left, closing the door again.  
Jasper and the delinquents searched the room for the bug, they knew was there and for possible weapons but the results were not really good: While they found the bug and a fire-ax, they couldn’t find any more weapons, worth mentioning. Table legs and pillows didn't stand a chance against shock-sticks, stun-guns protector-suits and plastic-shields. They decided, to hide the ax until they had a plan, so the guards wouldn’t take it away prior.

Bellamy was carrying a tray of food into the quarantine-yard, where Dante Wallace was held.  
“Hello Mr. President.”  
Dante stood up and switched on the old phonograph, that had been placed in the cell, along with a canvas and some paint.  
The music should make it hard, to listen to their conversation.  
“Am I correct, to assume, that you are a friend of Ms. Griffin's?”  
“We need your help.”  
“You are aware, that except for the prospect of immanent death, my situation is not much better than your friends'. What do you expect?”  
“You can tell me the me the passwords and codes, so I can switch of the acid-fog and let the army in. Your son would be forced to surrender.” Bellamy said as he placed the tray on the table, opened the lid slowly and laid out the plate and the cutlery properly.  
“I can not do that. Cage surely has changed them by now and I do not want to help, letting in an army of savages, that tries to kill my people. But I am able, to help your friends, that are held prisoner.”

The delinquents held tight to each other, like some of them had seen in documentaries on violence-less protests.  
When the guards came in again, it first seemed to be working, until one of them used a shock-stick and the whole row cramped. One of them tackled Jasper into the bunk-beds.  
“You have to do better the next time. They're killing you. I'm getting you some help, but you need to stall them.”  
Bellamy slipped Jasper a handgun and punched him in the stomach, so he curled up and kept on the ground.  
Dr. Tsing looked at the delinquents, like she was proud: “I want you to know, how important you are to us.”  
The guards left.

Bellamy had heard the news: Clarke had released the prisoner to deliver threats towards the president. Since then the patrols in the reaper tunnels had been tripled and the control-room was now manned with at least six, all of them checking exclusively the cameras surveying the outside.  
When Bellamy used the key-card of the dead guard, he never met anybody.

Jasper had spoken to the others and they were prepared, when the guards came in, everyone had some kind of weapon held behind his back.  
The second, they wanted to grab one of them, everything became dark for a few seconds, the sound of wood against plexiglass and some grunts could be heard, a gurgling, when the fire-ax hit a throat and the sound of a gun shot.  
The light was back. While the delinquents had more experience in fighting in Schwartz' blackness, they still wanted to keep their enemies in the dark about their powers and decided not to use them more than necessary.  
Three of the guards were dead, their weapons in the hands of the delinquents, the remaining guards and Dr. Tsing stood at the door, when one of them reached out for their walkie-talkie.  
Their skins began turning red. The delinquents recognized the signs of a radiation-leak and stormed forwards, not wasting bullets on the doomed soldiers.  
The doctor fled towards the elevator. The doors were already closing behind her, before the damage in her lungs caused her to cough blood.  
A fire-ax pried the doors open, before they had closed properly. Jasper, Monty and Harper looked down on the collapsed scientist.  
“We want you to know, how important you are to us.”


	33. Fire

Under Raven's instructions, Bellamy had linked a headset to the radio and was now in a maintenance-shaft next to the control-room. Raven had caught a single report from the mountain-men's radios and it was extremely vague and unsettling: “I left the tunnels. I will arrive at the target-area in approximately seven hours. Radio-silence, till I confirm the target, from now on.”  
Bellamy could see into the room from above. The big monitors were in his view and he tried to guess, by what was displayed, what the target could be, since Camp Jaha, TonDC and a multitude of grounder war-camps were about seven hours away from an exit of the reaper-tunnels.  
The door opened.  
“And now we will get rid of the damn Commander and his war-council.”  
“It sounds good, but if I recall correctly, since our failed assassination attempt on Clarke Griffin, Commander Lexa had tripled her personal guard and rarely leaves her camps. And the war-council consists of twelve generals, experienced fighters and every one of them with an own personal guard. Do we even know where they are?”  
“We have much movements towards this town in former Washington. Right now there are 40 targets at this place. Johnson will make sure, that the Commander won't survive this.”  
“40 targets and you sent him alone? Johnson is good, but not that good!”  
“That's why we're using a missile.”  
Bellamy got out of earshot. “Did you hear that?”  
“Yes I will warn them, you and Raven focus on your part.”  
“Octavia,...”  
“Is here in Camp Jaha together with Indra.”  
Raven switched of the radio.  
“You know, that she and Indra went to TonDC for the gathering of the war-council.”  
“Bellamy can't be distracted with worries about his sister, when he can do nothing to save her.”  
Clarke ran out and rode to TonDC.

Indra, Octavia and a small delegation of Trikru warriors arrived in TonDC in time to see another group of warriors with white war paint put up tents and their general enter the actual village. For the meeting of the war-council TonDC had increased its size tenfold, mainly with a sea of tents surrounding the wooden buildings. The war-council would meet in the concrete structure, where already the banquet for the alliance with the arkers had been held.  
“Everybody follows Commander Lexa's call! Even Azgeda, the Ice-nation. This is the first time, this white paint is worn by allies and not enemies.”  
Even if neither her tone nor her facial expression deviated from her typical mix of stoicism and despise, her pride in the situation was evident.  
“You will guard the camp together with the other seconds. Your shift will start an hour, until then you have no further duties.”  
“Thank you, Indra”

Octavia used the time, to get to know the other clans better and was at the entrance of the village, when Clarke arrived.  
“Hi! Do you have news from Bellamy?”  
“Yes, he's doing good. Do you know where Lexa is?”  
“The Commander is in the war room, Princess.”, Octavia said, grinning and pointing to the concrete building.  
Without another word Clarke hurried ahead, the guards at the door recognized her and didn't even try to stop her.

“Lexa, can we talk under four eyes?”  
The Commander just nodded and the guards left the room.  
“Bellamy brought news from the mountain: They will use a missile to kill you and destroy TonDC.”  
“Okay.”  
Clarke noticed, that the contents of Lexa's tent had followed her here, when Lexa opened a chest and pulled out two cloaks and handed one to Clarke.  
“There is an underground tunnel in here, that will lead us out of TonDC unseen, we should be able to make it to safety, if we leave now.”  
She had already turned to lead the way, when Clarke started to react, to what she had said.  
“What about the village?”  
“The village can't be saved.”  
“You should give an evacuation order!”  
“Then the Mountain would know, that we have a spy in their midst and kill him, before he can deactivate the acid-fog. Victory stands on the back of sacrifices, Clarke.”  
Lexa left and Clarke followed.

They had exited the tunnel, when Clarke saw a group approaching the town. She recognized the last person.  
“Mum? What the fuck are you doing here?” Before Lexa could hold her back, Clarke ran to her mother.  
“Mum, wait, you can't go to TonDC now!”  
“What? Why are you here?”  
Lexa caught up to them and pulled at Clarke's arm.  
“We need to go.”  
With that, they fled further away from TonDC. Dr. Griffin looked for a few seconds at the point, where her daughter had been standing before she turned towards TonDC again.

Octavia was stationed as guard together with another second about her age. She had not bothered, to learn his name, even though she had already met him before in the ring. After she had given him a bloody nose and a dislocated shoulder, he and the other seconds had stopped to say insults to her face, but it was still evident, that they thought less of her, because she was not born on the ground and had started her training so late.  
“Did you hear that?”  
“That's the wild you hear, sky-girl, even you should be used to this sound by now.”  
“Listen closely, idiot, “the wild” is getting quiet! Something large is close.”  
The other second listened; small wildlife would always cause an array of noises and stop, when a big predator like a puma or a human came into its view. In a 30 meter diameter all the birds and cicadas were silent. He wouldn’t admit to the sky-girl, that he was wrong.  
“The birds are quiet because of us. But if it makes you sleep better, I will take a look.”  
Octavia was not worried, even if he fought not as well as she, he was able to stand his ground against the local predators. As for human attackers: The only ones, that could move this silent through these woods, were the Trikru themselves.  
But after a few seconds the other second had neither returned nor made a sound, indicating, that he had found something. Octavia drew her sword and walked slowly in a big circle around the spot, she had last seen him, to make out traces, where to he had vanished, without falling prey, to whatever lurked between the trees.  
Than she saw Lincoln kneeling behind a bush over a bloody body, obviously not giving first aid.  
“Lincoln!”, she shouted, almost angry.  
He turned with a wild look on his face, only for his eyes to clear up, upon seeing her. If he wasn't already kneeling, he would fall on his knees know. He began to cry: “It's my fault. The Mountain has your brother, because I couldn’t fight it...”  
He was interrupted by Octavia kicking him. “Bellamy contacted us a few days ago! Stand up and come with me to TonDC.”  
“I can't. Not after what I have done. I betrayed your brother. I'm a reaper!”  
Octavia kicked him again.  
“That's not what you taught me. Get beaten down, stand back up! Fight!”

The object, that left Mount Weather, was a small short-distance-missile, the range was limited to a few miles. The bomb it carried was not a nuclear warhead, but an old-fashioned chemical one. It was aimed exactly for the door, through which the Commander and the leader of the Arkers Clark Griffin had gone a few moments ago. The projectile broke through a wall before detonating, thus the bomb exploded inside a concrete building and not on a free field surrounded by wooden houses.  
It turned the old structure into rubble and dust and collapsed the catacombs beneath it. Except for the falling roof the catacombs were the safest place in TonDC, because the shock wave did not travel unhindered through the ground as it did through the air on the surface. Normally explosions were much more dangerous in closed rooms and tunnels, since rapid pressure changes could make a human loose consciousness, hearing, the ability to keep the balance or even life.  
But because the explosion didn't reach the tunnels through the air, Marcus Kane was buried alive.  
On ground-level the explosion launched dust and ruble throughout TonDC. The flying debris destroyed the houses. The dust-storm blinded, made it hard to breath, at some places suffocated fires and at other places it caused huge fireballs. The collapsed tunnels caused the ground to sink down a few meters, for the spotter it looked, as if the whole town was within the area of the crater.  
He was nonplussed, to see people run through the target location, apparently unharmed.

Abby was thrown to the ground. She stood back up and looked around, to see the town in ruins.  
She heard a faint, repetitive sound coming from a hole in the ground. Without second thought, she crawled in, to help, whoever was in the tunnels.  
She found Marcus Kane with most of his body still above the collapsed ceiling of the tunnel.  
His leg was trapped beneath it and Abby started removing the rubble. When she tried to move a log, that touched his leg, he screamed in pain and she looked at his leg closer.  
“The good news is, that this log prevents you from dying from blood loss or the infection in your leg, like a tourniquet, but if we don't free your leg soon and treat it, you'll need a new one.”

“We have to help them!”  
“The one who directed the missile will see us and then the Mountain will know, that we evacuated.”  
“Not if we kill the spotter, before he reports.”  
Bang.

Octavia lead Lincoln towards TonDC, when the missile hit. Octavia made the connection between this and Clarke's hurried arrival, but she concentrated, on the task at hand: she ran and found the village in ruins. Before she could start looking for more survivors, the bang of a sniper rifle ripped a hole through the torso of a familiar, dark-skinned, commanding figure.  
“We have to get her to a cover, to treat that!”  
Where the collapsed tunnels had let the ground sink, shallow trenches had formed.  
Lincoln crawled through one those trenches towards Indra. He grabbed her and pulled her down into the relative cover of the trench, then to the border of the town. When she realized, who was carrying her, Indra managed to look even more disgruntled then she had been.  
“Octavia! Stop wasting your time here. You are my second. Take charge over the other seconds! Help those buried beneath the rubble.”  
“They don't listen to me.”  
“Make them!”  
Octavia went into the trench.  
“As long as the sniper is still there, they can't do much.”  
“I will kill him.”

The sound of the sniper rifle made both Abby and Kane flinch, some rubble started to slide, and the way Abby had come, was blocked.  
“At least I will die in good company”, Kane smirked.  
“We won't die in here”, Abby retorted.  
“Don't worry. Clarke is save in Camp Jaha. She and the Commander...” Abby started to sob.  
“I know, Clarke is save!”  
“What?”  
“I saw her running from TonDC with Lexa, when I came here. Marcus, She knew!”  
“What do you mean?”  
“She warned me not to enter TonDC! She knew, that the missile would come and yet she let it happen! Why did she do that?”  
“Because we taught her, to do so. Back on the ark, we did that all the time; Kill the few to save the many. If she had attempted to evacuate the village, they would have known, that we have an inside-man and killed him. In this war, Bellamy is more important than we all are.”  
“So this is who we are now?”  
“If what we are, is what we do to survive, than non of us deserves to survive.”  
“Maybe you are right, maybe we don't deserve to be saved”, Abby concluded.

While moving up the hill, from which the spotter must be shooting, Clarke looked back, and saw TonDC. What had been a beehive of villagers and warriors of the coalition, was now a ruined field. Even if everybody, who had been inside a building or the tunnels, had survived, the bomb still killed hundreds.  
“How do you feel about the Mountain now?”, Lexa asked, referring to Clarke's refusal, to use the attack on the Mountain, to not only retrieve their prisoners, but also end the war for good.  
“Now I want them dead.”, Clarke admitted.  
Then they saw Lincoln.  
“As long as the sniper shoots at the survivors, he won't see us coming.”, Lincoln said simply.

Octavia reached a few of the other seconds.  
“We have to dig out those, that are buried in the tunnels.”  
“Do it yourself, sky-girl. The closest entrance is over there.”  
She looked where the second pointed: The hole was surrounded by rubble. When they got there, the could dig without leaving cover, but the way was without cover.  
Octavia blinked; the ashes and smoke of one of the fires blew right towards her position.  
She heard one of the seconds drinking from a bottle. She grabbed it and smelled: it was alcoholic but not high percentage. She threw it into the fire. The bottle shattered and sprayed the liquid around and when it ignited, the sniper misfired.  
Octavia stopped one of the seconds, from running out, the small distraction was not enough cover, the dense smoke, that covered the area between their destination and their current cover shortly later, was.

The shoots at the village stopped, the sniper must have either run out of targets, or heard them coming.  
Clarke saw his radio, before she saw the shooter himself, it rested on a stone about six meters from them. Clarke took aim, to destroy it, before it could be used.  
Lincoln and Lexa ran ahead and a shot could be heard. Clarke pulled the trigger and the radio turned into a mess of plastic shards and wire. She turned to see Lexa holding her leg, the sniper must have shot blind, and Lincoln facing her. He was held by a man in a camouflage suit. The man held an arm around Lincoln's throat, a knife in his hand. The blade was touching his skin, if Lincoln would try to free himself from his grip, he would bleed out in seconds.  
Clarke pointed her pistol at the head of the man, while she took in the situation: the man had not pulled a pistol, but a knife, which meant, that he did not carry any gun, besides the rifle, that lay on the ground. It did not point towards TonDC but towards Lexa, when he had heard them coming, he must have tried to shoot them, but the heavy rifle was unfit, to fight in this short distance, which was, why he now held Lincoln hostage.  
“If you shoot me, he dies. Even if you get a clean head-shot, my falling body would still draw my knife across his throat.”  
“Kill him, Clarke!”, both Lincoln and Lexa said.  
“I'm willing to sacrifice myself.”  
“But I'm don't want to sacrifice my friends, if it can be avoided.”  
The man looked almost surprised: “You surrender?”  
“I said, I won't sacrifice my friends, if I don't have to.”  
Clarke shot. In old movies, the hero would always kill the villain, by shooting through the hostage, causing a minor injury. That was nonsense. Why risk an infection, and the villain killing the hostage before dying from a shot to the lung, when the head was in plain view? Besides, this method didn't solve the actual problem, that the mass of the dead body falling backwards, would kill the hostage.  
Clarke's shot was not aimed, to kill the man, but to free Lincoln. Her bullet forced the knife away from his throat.  
Lincoln felt the knife moving and duck; the sniper was still standing tall, albeit bleeding.  
Clarke's second bullet changed that.

When they came back, the situation looked already much better. Under Octavia's command the seconds had started clearing the rubble. A delegation from Camp Jaha had arrived with ropes, medicine and tools. The warriors from the surrounding war-camps had come, to guard the former village and had brought water.  
Abby, Kane and some others had been freed from the tunnels and were treated when the grounders saw Lexa and Clarke.  
Lexa spoke up: “Today the Mountain attacked us with unknown brutality. In order to make us flee, they have slaughtered hundreds of us. We see this, for what it is: The proof, that they fear us! The proof, that together, we will bring down the Mountain!  
They tried to destroy the alliance, that promised their fall, but now we stand stronger than ever!”  
The crowd rejoiced and the heroes stood tall.


	34. Tension

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really should have just named them Chapter 1,2,3,...

Clarke felt miserable. While she had walked back to TonDC she had thought about the spotter. The fact, that he had not been wearing a hazard-suit left only one conclusion: The 47 kids in Mt. Weather were harvested for their bonemarrow and the treatment worked.  
Then there were the stares her mother and Octavia were giving her. Of course they knew, that Clarke had known about the missile.  
Talking to Lexa did not help in this matter.  
“You seem distressed.”  
“It's just: one of my friends, Octavia is avoiding me, since TonDC.”  
“She's Indra's second, right? She must be busy.”  
“No, that's not, the problem. Raven treated me similar, when I killed Finn.”  
“Why?”  
“I meet her, when I came to warn you. She must have figured out, we knew.”  
“Than she has to die.”  
“What? Why?”  
“If she tells anybody, that you knew, yet did not the citizens of TonDC, the simple warriors will blame sky-kru for the dead and the alliance would fall.”  
“She wouldn’t do that!”  
“What guarantee do you have, that she won't tell her friends or the other seconds?”  
“None, but I trust her! You will not harm her! I am responsible for my people and you for yours.”  
“Fine.”

“Okay we can hold this position for a while. Monty, cams?”  
“The ones in here are destroyed. I linked those in the hallways to the monitors in here, so we can see them coming. All the entries except the elevator are blocked.”  
“Great! Bring buckets with water in here and spread them around here. Remember our plan, for when they get through the barricade!”  
The 47 were preparing for the Mountain-men's next attempt to recapture them.  
The radiation-leak had not been fixed, which gave them another advantage, since most of the enemies would still need a hazard-suit.  
Furthermore, the Mountain still had no record of their gifts, except for Schwartz, which could be blamed on a camera-malfunction, or a black-out.  
On the other side, they were heavily outnumbered, outgunned and were playing on time.  
They knew no way to escape the Mountain and were effectively trapped in their current location, which was their dormitory and the hallway to the elevator.  
When the soldiers came, they were as ready as they could be. A few of the soldiers did not wear hazard-suits and thus were high-priority targets, since they could go further from the Mountain.  
It was Carl Emerson's first assignment, since he had come back, and he had learned not to underestimate the children.  
He stood behind his men, when they smashed through the barricade to throw gas grenades into the dormitory.  
Learning from Dr. Tsing's death he had ordered one of his men, to hold the elevator, so they wouldn’t have to wait for it in case of a rushed retreat.  
He waited two minutes. There was a low chance, that the 47 could hold their breath this long.  
Those of his men, that did not wear hazard-suits, wore gas-masks, in case the gas from the grenades had not yet been filtered out by the ventilation-system.  
On the ground lay the children, in their hands the weapons, they had taken from the soldiers they had killed earlier.  
Between them were buckets and pots with water.  
The soldiers paid them no mind, and grabbed the zip-ties on their belts to bind the unconscious children, that lay to their feet.  
Before everything went black, Emerson heard their leader, Jasper, shout: “Now!” and the armed kids opened their eyes.  
He didn't try to fight. When he turned he heard the sound of several guns being fired at once.  
When he was halfway to the elevator, his eyesight returned. A glance over his shoulder revealed a black void. A bullet missed him barely.  
When the elevator doors closed behind him, he was sure, that he was the only survivor.

Jasper did not show his concern. One of the soldiers had escaped. That meant, now the Mountain knew about their best trump card. That it had been one of those, that could leave the Mountain, did not make it better. At least, the were now much better armed. One gun per person, knifes and batons for close combat, protective gear of those, that had not worn hazard-suits and the O²-tanks from the hazard-suits. With enough Oxygen everything was flammable.

“Octavia, we have to talk!”  
“No, I have to go to the other side of the camp.”  
“Really? I get, you don't want to talk to me, but that's childish.”  
“No, one of the seconds came a few minutes ago: Indra assigned me there on guard-duty.  
But you are right, I do not want to talk to you and making up excuses to prevent that would be childish. Rest assured, that even if everybody else treats you as a princess, I will tell you to fuck off to your face.”  
With that Octavia was gone. Clarke cursed to herself. Octavia had not told anybody yet, but Clarke was still uneasy over Lexa's words.  
She wandered aimlessly through the camp, when she met Indra.  
“Indra, you shouldn’t be working already! A few hours ago, you had a hole in your stomach!”  
“And your mother closed it minutes later. I was forced to rest. Now I wish congratulate Octavia. As you can attest, the burden of leadership is heavy and I heard she handled it well. Do you know where she is?”  
“I will send her to you, when I find her.”  
An optimist would suspect, that Octavia had made up her orders, or that it was a prank from one of the other seconds. Clarke knew, that Octavia didn't lie and the other seconds wouldn’t dare to prank her at this point.

Clarke knew, what to look out for, and so she found him quickly: behind a tent was one of Lexa's men. Since Octavia was guarding the camp, she stood with her back to him.  
He took his bow from his back, Clarke drew her gun.  
Quiet enough, that Octavia wouldn’t hear anything, she said: “Don't!”  
“If you want to kill me, then do it.”  
“If I wanted to shoot you, I would have. You come with me.”

The guards in front of Lexa's tent didn't even try to stop her, when she lead a man with a gun to his head in.  
“I apologize, Heda...”  
With a kick Clarke brought him to his knees, holding him by his collar.  
“I thought, I was being clear!”  
“Clarke, she is a danger to us.”  
“You can't just kill everybody, you don't trust!”  
“I can, and if they pose a threat, I will.”  
Clarke let go of the man and he, with a look at his Heda, hurried to get out of the tent.  
“And who do you trust, if you can’t trust those I trust?”  
“I do not trust. I rely on obedience only.”  
“And you don´t trust anybody, because 'Love is weakness' and friendship is a luxury a leader can’t afford.”  
“Correct. To be Commander is to be alone.”  
“So you just nodded, when I told you, that Anya was dead. You plunged your sword into Gustus And you let everybody burn in TonDC.”  
After a short silence Lexa replied:” Not everybody. Not you.”  
While talking Clarke had advanced throughout the tent and backed Lexa nearly onto her table.  
As she realized, what Lexa had just sad, she noticed, how close together they stood, nearly making physical contact, even though Lexa was leaning backwards.  
Lexa began straightening, effectively slowly closing the small gap Clarke had left between them.  
Clarke did not shy away.  
When their lips met, she returned the kiss.

“No. I can’t. Not yet.” Clarke was sincere.  
The silence was less awkward than should be expected.  
“Octavia has nothing to fear from me.”


	35. The mountain crumbles

Clarke was in good mood. While the prisoners escaping the same way she had, had been a possibility, it had been risky. Now Raven had found a way, to open the main door from the outside.  
Since it also included cutting the mountain´s main source of power it was not only ideal, to distract them from the prisoners getting out, but also made sure, that they could not strike back with their missiles.  
Raven insisted on leading the strike-team, that would destroy the generators, as soon as Bellamy gave the signal. Her group consisted mainly of grounders, but also the engineer, she had worked with.

Octavia and Indra were in good mood. Thanks to the Tone-generator, they were able to easily restrain the reapers coming their way. The small number of mountain-men were ill prepared to fight in the dark twists and turns of the tunnels. They were waiting at the “waste-disposal”-chute, through which Clarke and Anya had escaped before.

Cage was in good mood. While all available intel suggested, that Clarke Griffin and the Commander had survived the missile, they were sure to die now.  
As expected, shortly after the key-card of the missing guard had been used, to enter the room, where the veil was produced, someone tried to use the terminal, to neutralize the acid.  
Then a firework went of in the Camp of the Arkers.  
A huge amount of people closed in on the mountain. When the entire army was within reach, he gave the order.  
From below an explosion could be felt. Cage switched his walkie-talkie back on.  
The team, sent to apprehend the spy did not respond.  
“Sound out a team to secure the main gate and the dam!”  
“The veil...”  
“Is compromised. If either is conquered we are doomed.”  
The coordination of the attack indicated a well prepared plan. The success of his men was unlike. They could not use the missiles. They had to few, that they could use at short-range, none they could use to cover the dam. Maybe his father knew, what he could do.

Raven's team had been barely hindered in its attempt to destroy the generators. They had brought remote-controlled bombs, but destroying a generator is easier than it looks: it's basically a magnet spinning in a copper-coil. Get a piece of iron inside, and it rips itself to pieces. The bombs were there, to shorten the time.  
Then another force of mountain-men showed up and killed their grounder-guards.  
Raven ignited the bombs and nearly died, because she was still in the same room, but could be taken alive.

Cage did not like talking to his father, or admitting defeat, but here he was doing both.  
“Congratulations, you doomed our civilization.”  
“You think, there is nothing we could do? We haven't lost the dam nor the main gate yet.”  
“You know fully well, that without the veil, we can't protect the dam against a siege and without the dam, we can't repair the veil. But I meant, that you limited our future to only one chance: surrender.”  
“They would kill us.”  
“Together: yes, they would not accept our surrender. But we can give the savages their people back. The Commander will unlikely risk her men for revenge. The difficult part is, to offer her the truce, in a way, that Griffin can't object it in time.”

As soon as the gate was in sight, the vanguard got under heavy fire. Marcus Kane, Clarke Griffin and Commander Lexa were still behind the treeline.  
Marcus confirmed, what Clarke already thought: “Sustained fire, not aimed shots. They know, they lose if we reach the door.”  
“This is their last resort?”, Lexa confirmed.  
“Most likely.”  
“Then I will handle this personally.”  
Black lines started showing over her face. It Clarke about a second to realize, that these lines, were in fact veins. They became thicker, the black color spreading all over her skin.  
Before her eyes Lexa doubled in size, the gargantuan sword, her guard always carried, was now an appropriate weapon for her. She left the cover and stormed the towards the gate.  
The bullets bounced of Lexa's torso without causing any damage. The gunfire stopped shortly after.


	36. Cave-in

Lexa returned, while the gate opened. When the captured grounders walked out of the Mountain, she hugged Clarke, she whispered in her ear:” They were already dead, when we stormed the dam, do not feel remorse.”  
“I do not understand, what is happening?” Due to the darkness, Clarke couldn't see Lexa's face very good, but the pain was evident.  
“She made a deal. She stops the attack and all future incursions, and we release the prisoners.” A smug Emerson had followed Lexa.  
“My people?”  
Lexa was close to tears. “Were not part of the deal.”  
The grounders retreated.

They were on their way, to resupply Maya with oxygen, when she whispered to Clarke:” I am dead.”  
“Don't worry, we'll get you into level 5.”  
“I'm not talking about right now, I mean long term. Jasper will not accept it, but there is no way for those of us, that stood against Cage, to survive the next sixty hours. Honestly I can't imagine us in general to survive more than a few years.”  
“What are you talking about?”  
“If you save your people, I either die in the crossfire, or of radiation-poisoning when the back-up generators fail. If Cage drains your people, he will kill me as a terrorist.”  
“No, we can donate bone-marrow...”  
“You know, how a bone-marrow therapy works. I don't have the time for the necessary preparations. I will most likely die today.”  
“Why are you telling me this?”  
“I don't want you to try and safe people, that cannot be saved. And that means me, those that helped you and all the mountain-men.”  
“No, if I can get Cage to surrender...”  
“We both know, he no longer can. When you destroyed that dam, he could no longer win. Even if you fail today and he manages to treat all of our people and the grounders honor that deal, he still can't really leave Mount Weather, because the remainder of your people outnumber him and the Commander won't stop them from attacking us. The only way, to repair the dam is to exterminate your people. And from that moment on, the mountain-men are back to square one, because the infants won't inherit the radiation-resistance, to live outside the bunker. Only now the bunker is severely damaged and the outsiders live now much further away and we no longer have any reserve or the reapers. The question is not if we die, it is when and how.”  
Clarke took a while, to process, what Maya had told her to do.  
“You want me to kill over 300 people. How would I even do that?”  
“The rooms in level 5 can be irradiated. Than you would only have Cage and Emerson left.”  
“That would be horrific!”, Clarke interrupted herself, because she was getting to loud and Jasper was about to hear them. Octavia and Bellamy were already pale, but said nothing.  
“I can't just do that in cold blood.”  
“I heard you burned 300 outsiders to death.”  
“That was in self-defense. They would have killed me”  
“So will we. I would like my people to die in a less gruesome way, but there is none.”

They split up. Clarke, Bellamy and Monty headed to the control room, while Jasper and Octavia tried to smuggle Maya into level 5.  
Despite only the back-up generators running, all systems seemed still to be functional. The view on the monitors filled Clarke with dread. One screen showed the civilians herded together in the mess-hall. Scared and seemingly aware, that their life was in danger.  
Another showed Jasper, Octavia and Maya arguing. The camera did not record audio, but it was apparent, what they were arguing about.  
Then there was the other room. Here were Cage, a doctor, Emerson and a few more guards extracting the bone-marrow from their captives, draining them dry. The room had no body-chute like the room the grounders had been kept in, so they just threw the drained corpses into a corner.

Clarke grabbed a walky-talky and called Emerson:” Give me Cage. I have an ultimatum for him.”  
Cage accepted the device and Emerson left level 5.  
“You have an ultimatum for me?”  
“I'm sitting in your control-room and now have only one bargaining chip: the lives of your people, all 380 of them.”  
“What are you talking about?”  
“One press of a button, and level 5 will no longer be supplied with radiation free air. Release my people or I will irradiate level 5!”  
“You won't dare!”  
“Do you think, I want to?! If you had surrendered, before the dam was destroyed, I might have been able to save your people, but you doomed them, and now I no longer have a choice.”  
“I doomed them? I am freeing them! One of your people for eight of mine! This is the greater good!”  
“Do you actually believe that? You longer have your hydro-cultures! For miles around you there is no arable land! You inevitably have to go to war with the remainder of my people and the grounders. The bunkers is weakened and can no longer withstand a siege. Thanks to your hostility towards us, there is no future outside the Mountain for you and thanks to your plan, there is none inside the Mountain either. You dammed your people and now I want to save, who can still be saved!”  
Cage did not answer. Instead he gave orders to the doctor and the guards.  
They grabbed Abby and started extracting bone-marrow from her.  
“I don't negotiate with terrorists.”

Jasper tried to murder Cage. Of course it didn't work. He was captured and the guards were in the process of chaining him up with the other arkers, when Clarke switched the switched and killed 380 people.


End file.
